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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25194130">a hard row to hoe (yes, it's a long way to go)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sk4di/pseuds/sk4di'>sk4di</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>unlikely [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Ocean's 8 (2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Gen, Kid Fic, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, this is very random and I wish this was a sitcom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 09:03:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>26,571</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25194130</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sk4di/pseuds/sk4di</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellevilles and Oceans have shared history; heists, partnerships, competition, weddings, funerals, Fourth of July parties and more heists. Debbie didn't see a new chapter of this long alliance coming - and she definitely did not see it falling under her responsibility.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lou Miller/Debbie Ocean</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>unlikely [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1961611</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>68</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. millenium</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I hope you find this as fun and entertaining to read as I thought it was to write.</p><p>xx,<br/>sk4di</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was against Debbie's will at first. But "it's temporary, a week or two," Danny said over the phone from jail and she was half convinced - the money did the other half. It was a job she had no idea how to work through, she had no experience and no guidance and not an ounce of enthusiasm about. But she had Lou, as always.</p><p>Lou was the one keeping the job together, she was the one walking Debbie through the steps. It could be said that, for once, the roles were reversed but Lou was doing no planning - and was succeeding at it. It was her kind of job, she was figuring things as they went and Debbie had to put her love for meticulously planned jobs aside and admit that there was a beauty to Lou's way of working; it wouldn't take them anywhere in a different situation, but in that special case it worked like Debbie's ways could never.</p><p>It's right to say the job was quite small. Nocturnal, mostly. And very low risk. After all, Toni was just seven-months-old, an insomniac, and keeping a child alive and safe was no crime at all, especially if you were legally assigned by the parents as a guardian.</p><p>"The Bellevilles knew what was coming for them," Danny told her in a somber tone. "Somebody arranged the kid's survival."</p><p>Survival from the bloodbath that killed the crime family in their Rhode Island home on Christmas Eve, he meant. A couple of guys from the Russian mafia invaded their property and shot dead the entire clan, everyone that shared little Toni’s last name, making her the last of an long lineage. The baby was put inside a cupboard during the entire event by one of the deceased ones before the killers could find her and, miraculously, she stayed there until next morning, without making a sound, until the cops arrived.</p><p>She got delivered to Debbie Ocean after spending a couple of days in a foster home, when the system found out her family had previously signed instructions to pass her guardianship to Frank Ocean. But Frank Ocean and his wife Hilda were presumably dead and their oldest son, Daniel, in jail. So, as last resort, his youngest, his daughter, Deborah Ocean was the new legal guardian of Antonia Grace Belleville.</p><p>"Dad owned them a favor, as always. A big one, from long ago," was all the explanation Danny gave her about why they were responsible for little Toni Belleville now. "Also, her mother was our cousin. Do you remember Judy?"</p><p>Oceans and Bellevilles had history that dated back generations: heists, partnerships, competition, weddings, funerals, Fourth of July parties and more heists. Once again, they were creating a spot on that shared timeline - the last one, perhaps – and it was all on Debbie.</p><p>She did remember cousin Judy, the small, sweet-looking woman that was known as a talented forger. She looked at the asleep baby inside the carrier on her coffee table but couldn't grasp any substantial similarity between mother and daughter: Toni had dark brown hair, so different from her mother's auburn locks, with chubby rosy cheeks and the big brown eyes so common in Oceans.</p><p>"What's the plan?" Debbie asked Danny over the phone, still staring at the baby.</p><p>"Not letting her die is enough for now," he said. "Until you find a new arrangement."</p><p>"Or until you get out of jail," Debbie said and he agreed dismissively.</p><p>Lou came home that evening to find Debbie still staring at the baby, one feet of distance between them. They exchanged a look and Lou put aside any substancial questions for the moment - she knew better. She just approached them, leaned over the baby and took a long look.</p><p>"It's temporary," Debbie told her.</p><p>"Of course it is," Lou said, hand on her hips. "Meanwhile, shouldn't we change him?"</p><p>"Her." Debbie felt the need to clarify since there was no pink in sight.</p><p>"Her," Lou repeated. "We should change her. She smells."</p><p>Debbie rolled her eyes. Life was a fucking joke.</p><hr/><p>The first week was the worse. Toni didn’t cry – traumatized about the recent events, they supposed - and that was a relief and the worst thing ever at the same time because how were they supposed to know she needed anything? Debbie didn’t know how to hold her or how to make her sleep or what she was supposed to eat and it would be the end of both of them if Lou wasn’t around.</p><p>“I babysat once or twice,” Lou said as she fed Toni the smashed papaya with oatmeal sitting on their kitchen counter, Toni on her lap, on the very first day, after they finally managed to find diapers and change her. “Not all of us grew up as crime princesses, honey.”</p><p>It was around the time they were living in that hidden treasure of a two bedroom in D.U.M.B.O. Lou took shifts at two pubs a few days a week, mostly to keep herself busy, and used the nights to serve Debbie and whatever her plans reserved for the two of them. They knew each other for over a decade back then and had forgotten how to live apart; everything was shared, from secrets to cuts and it was no different when Toni came around.</p><p>Lou was good with Toni in the same proportion Debbie was terrible. There were days she would come from her shifts to find the two of them sitting in opposite sides of the living room, staring at each other. Debbie surrounded by maps and notes and documents, and Toni inside the playpen that came with her stuff and they set up for her near their living room window.</p><p>“You have to hold her, Deb,” Lou would say, because for that first week she was the one doing everything for the kid. She would come home, feed, change and put her to sleep, knowing Debbie had left her inside the playpen the entire afternoon.</p><p>“We respect each other’s space,” Debbie would answer, distracted with some blueprints by the poker table they often dined on. “Plus, she likes you more. Just look at how happy she looks.”</p><p>Lou looked down at the baby propped up in her hip, one small hand clutching her silky shirt. She really looked content. “She just likes being held. You should try it sometimes.”</p><p>Debbie would dismiss her, promising to make up with make her puree or slicing her some fruits for her to chew on.</p><p>Until one evening, New Year’s Eve, Lou didn’t come home the usual time. Debbie nervously looked at the baby playing with a loud colorful keyboard in her playpen and wondered if she too was worried about the disruption in their routine, where was their savior in leather and leopard print.</p><p>“Don’t make this weird,” Debbie said to the baby as she noticed the unquietness in her as half an hour became an hour and the blonde didn’t appear. She carefully picked her up, propping her up on her hip as she saw Lou do so many times. She was slightly shocked at how light her weight was, how soft the fabric of her mint green onesie felt and how warm she was against her body. “Okay. You’re okay, we’re okay. She is just getting us some champagne. Sometimes it's hard to steal bottles, your mother and I had learned that by fifteen,” she said, unaware she was trying to soothe herself, not the kid.</p><p>She sat by the sofa, holding the baby, talking to her in the one way she knew whenever she fussed. “You are tired, of course you are. I don’t like waiting either. But she is coming home, you’ll see, your buddy is coming home soon.”</p><p>They waited together until Lou entered the apartment two hours later, removing her coat and setting a bottle of champagne on their counter. “The pub was stacked, couldn’t get out sooner. At least I got this for our little party.” She looked at the two sets of brown eyes relieved to see her. Toni was sitting with her back resting against Debbie’s chest, quiet and sleepy and pleased. “Good evening, ladies,” she said with a smile, as she bent down and kissed Debbie’s forehead and soothed Toni's always spiked brown hair. “See, it wasn’t that bad to hold her, was it?”</p><p>Debbie immediately handed the baby to her and disappeared, saying she needed a shower, clearly evading the moment. It took her years to put together and understand how scared she was of that whole new setting.</p><p>Lou fed, changed, bathed and put the baby to sleep in the portable crib that also came with her stuff before their quiet New Year’s Eve dinner, since they couldn’t find someone to keep her while they were out. It was a wasted night; instead of conning rich men in fancy cocktail bars, they were sitting by their living room carpet, drinking and stealing glances at their uninvited guess in her playpen.</p><p>"We are not doing that," Lou said when Debbie suggested giving Toni’s ward to the state later that night, after two glasses of wine. "Foster care is a failure, we can't do that."</p><p>It drove Debbie mad that she couldn't ask why Lou cared because she knew that answer. It would be like asking if fire burns or if rivers run or if birds sing or if the flowers would blossom on springtime. She wanted to argue, to say that the two of them taking care of the kid couldn't be that much better than a foster home either, but Lou had stopped smoking inside the apartment since Toni came along, and Lou knew how to make her stop crying, and Lou could make her giggle like a baby in a diaper commercial.</p><p>Also Lou had more experience with foster care than she had. Raised by a loving single mother, she ended up in the system as her mother passed when she was fifteen. After experiencing her share of bad foster homes, eighteen-year-old flew to America and never looked back. So Debbie knew better than to argue back.</p><p>“I’ll find another kin then,” Debbie said and sighed. “I can’t do it, Lou. I have no idea what to do with her. Every minute you weren’t coming home I was getting more and more desperate. I am not right for this, I can’t do it,” she confessed. “We were supposed to be out there tonight, not here. This is not life for a kid. I am not what she needs, she needs a- I can't be all she has, the outcome won't be good.”</p><p>Lou nodded, pensely. She crawled on her hands and knees until she was sitting behind Debbie and wrapped her arms around her, softly pecking her cheek. She knew better than to argue, to tell Debbie that it had been just one week and that it was a big change, they were allowed to struggle do adapt. But she also knew Debbie was right in some degree; they were fooling themselves if they ever thought that could work. “I’ll help you, baby,” she whispered against the woman's cheek.</p><p>And Debbie sunk into her, turning to hide her face on the curve of her neck, smelling in the detergent of her black turtleneck sweater, as she did many nights before, pretending it was still last week and it was still just the two of them surviving this big city together. The side of hers that only existed there, in Lou's arms.</p><p>But, as the next weeks of incessant research showed them, there was no one else. No other Belleville and the other Oceans seemed just relieved that they weren’t in her shoes - they even tried Aunt Ida, but she was not interested in taking a stray in, she had bridge at Saturday morning, she said. Debbie tried to contact her parents but either they ignored her either the message never got to them in their hiding retirement paradise either they really were dead. Danny soon forgot he had anything to do with this, jumping from jail to his Vegas job back to jail again. It didn’t take long for Debbie to find herself considering foster care one more time.</p><p>The most curious thing was, though, she suspected Lou, at some point, as the months stretched, and winter became spring and spring became summer, forgot to think of Toni as a temporary job. Maybe she liked that the monthly parcel of her trust fund money that came with her was enough to keep them afloat without the need to pickpocket madmen in bars that tend to be dive but still charge way too much for a beer. Maybe she liked they had time to dedicate themselves to actual heists now. Maybe she liked not having her fists ready to punch anyone that threatened her or Debbie in their too constant to be fun dangerous nights of rigging poker tables on Queens. Maybe the kid made her feel close to her mom in some way.</p><p>Or worse, maybe she liked Toni. The kind of liking that there's no good reason behind, the kind of liking that you can't explain when asked and if you dare to try, you'll look like a fool; the way they liked each other.</p><p>And the worse part of it all, is that maybe Debbie learned to like the fact that Lou had found joy in such an inconvenient situation.</p><p>Also, she couldn’t be the one to ruin the shared legacy of the Oceans and Bellevilles, history would look down on her for that, she was sure.</p><p>So, deep down, she knew what to do. But even deeper down, a selfish part of her wondered if by saving Toni she wasn't ruining herself - or worse, them. Because it had been over ten years of Debbie &amp; Lou. Back and forth, up and downs, wins and losses, good and bad, always together, always having each other's back. There was not a name, a title, a label that was proper for them: they were bigger than any of that. They were a well-oiled machine, a perfect equation, a team. Two worked just fine, Debbie knew. She wasn't so sure if three, specially that number three with that huge asterisk, was a good number for them.</p><hr/><p>They dropped the kid with a babysitter for a weekend during that sweet space of time of the year in which summer turns into fall, and ran a neatly planned job in an Atlantic City bank. It ran smoothly, just the two of them against it all. With Debbie's plan and Lou's execution, by Sunday evening they had six hundred thousand dollars in a couple of duffel bags. Life couldn't taste sweeter on Debbie's lips.</p><p>"Good to know this still does it for you," she said, taking off her blonde curly wig.</p><p>Lou had the thrill of the heist all over her. Her eyes were mischievous and her posture was even higher, almightier than ever. She discarded her jacket before going to the balcony of the hotel room, four buttons of her white silky shirt open - totally unacceptable, totally irresistible - and golden chain disappearing inside her black lacy bra. She lit a cigarette and leaned on her elbows against the metal rail, facing the room. She ran a hand briefly though her hair, just growing out of a buzzcut, and a smirk appeared on her face after her first drag.</p><p>Debbie now had a room with a view.</p><p>"Don't start," Lou said, throwing her head back and looking at the night sky above.</p><p>So Debbie didn't. She discarded her heels and earrings and walked to Lou, one hand grasping the rail on each side of her body, crowding her.</p><p>The thrill of the heist was all over her too, she could feel it pumping through her arteries, running down her veins. She looked past Lou's head to the ocean behind her, resisting the urge of kissing the exposed throat in front of her. Waves coming and going, dragging sand away like fingers clawed running against bedsheets. Stubborn, chaotic, dangerous if you can't play its games. A mirror.</p><p>"Does it still do it for you?" She asked, looking into Lou's eyes when the blonde lowered her gaze back, daring her to pick up an argument, to call her out on her selfishness, to claim the superior morality, to drive her crazy.</p><p>But Lou just cupped Debbie's chin with one hand, the other arm thrown lazily over the rail, cigarette dancing between her fingers. "Every part of it," she said in a low voice that could make a weaker soul combust. One of eyebrows raised in tandem with the corner of her lips.</p><p>And then Debbie kissed her hungrily, giving up her worries to the feeling of the high of a good heist and that magnet force of a human being that close.</p><p>Lou kissed her back, discarding the rest of the cigarette and placing her hands on her waist, warm palms caressing over the fabric of her cocktail dress. "We will find her a home," she said, breaking the searing kiss as she nosed Debbie's cheek, addressing the constant worry in their minds for the past months.</p><p>"We should send her to Danny and Tess as soon as he's out," Debbie said, brushing their noses together.</p><p>"They'll just send her back to us.” She sighed.</p><p>"Lou I can't-"</p><p>"We will find a way. We will be fine." Lou kissed the side of Debbie's neck when the woman turned her head to stare at the ocean again. "I swear we will."</p><p>Debbie wasn’t sure if she believe in God, Oceans weren’t religious. Heaven seems like a good idea but she wonders if it is any better than when Lou holds her like that and hell can’t be much worse the some of the scrapes she put herself into during her thirty years in this world.</p><p>The ocean gazed right back at her and she stared back as she wrapped her arms around Lou's waist and rested her chin on her shoulder but she didn’t think much of metaphors or verses anymore - her mind was too focused on the promise of a night that was on the hands palmed against the small of her back.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. 2001</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Almost a year had passed and no other arrangement was found. No closer kin claimed Toni, no family miraculously returned from the dead. Danny was still in jail and Tess liked her enough to keep for a few days if necessary but not for the other seventeen years of her minor life. The law supported the guardianship and the money from her trust fund kept coming. It was weird how those things fell into place without any effort of Debbie's.</p><p>In other words, getting the kid out of her life wasn't Debbie's number one priority anymore. Toni was there, nothing she could do about it.</p><p>It did help that she was kind of cute now. Her brown hair grew enough to stop spiking up and started to fall onto forehead and eyes, so Lou sat her on the bathroom sink and gave her bangs, making her look like Scout Finch, and Debbie spent a couple of days chuckling at every sight of her. She started walking a few weeks before she turned one and every time she failed at her new skill, falling on her bottom, she would giggle, like a good old sport. Her insomnia phase had passed, she became a very agreeable eater and her span of attention was much better. She would now sit for long periods by Debbie's side, playing with her toys and occasionally watching as she designed her heists. Her first word was "Deb", or that's what they think they heard.</p><p>Also, Toni was surprisingly useful. No one suspects of a woman with a baby strapped to her chest - hell, no one even looks twice at them. Many small, low risk cons during those first months were executed like that.</p><p>"She is a natural," Debbie always said as she removed the kid from the sling when they got home. "A Belleville-Ocean. One of a kind." And the baby would smile that semi toothless smile of hers, pleased with the attention. </p><p>It was around that time that she started noticing how the world was filled with children everywhere. Children at the supermarket, children walking down the streets holding hands with their parents, children leaving the hospital with arms in casts, children children and children. She noticed how loud they were, how noisy, how inconvenient, really. And every time she saw a kid crying in public or throwing a tantrum, she realized that even if keeping Toni around wasn't easy, it also wasn't hard. Toni was good, as good as a kid could be - in her opinion.</p><p>Of course she could only say things like that because Lou was there to share the tasks of maintaining the kid alive. No, not exactly share, she did most of them. She ran baths with rubber ducks, she picked clothes and shoes, brushed teeth, cured colds, fed meals, served as a playmate and tucked her in. And the weird part: she didn't seem completely annoyed; she even enjoyed it a little too much in Debbie's opinion.</p><p>"You are going to miss her when she is gone," Debbie would tell her, because even though getting rid of the kid wasn't something she was actively working on anymore, it didn't mean she had lost hope on it.</p><p>"I'll be relieved," Lou would say back, but Debbie kept noticing how it kept getting less and less sincere every time she said it.</p><p>To Debbie, fell the tasks in between, the ones Lou was too busy to do or judged to be easy enough that, in her words, "even <em>you</em> can do it". So she tied shoes, cut apple slices, - stealing half of them, always - picked her up at babysitters and other things that didn't require any specific materteral ability.</p><p>Not that she didn't have affection or cared for the kid (you can't really not care about someone that clings to you like that when they fall asleep on you or try so hard to say your name right) but whatever it was she felt for Toni, it wasn't motherly at all. She was the cool-criminal-distant-cousin-in-charge-of-her-care until someone else took the spot or until she turned eighteen.</p><p>That’s how they lived for those first months. There were days that even Debbie forgot that that wasn’t the life they were supposed to be living.</p><hr/><p>It was September when things changed. More precisely, September 11th. Yes, that day.</p><p>She doesn't really remember where she was the night before but it was somewhere with alcohol and somehow there was a Rolex on her bedside table when she woke up in the morning. She noticed the pointers indicating just a dozen minutes past seven, she was always a early bird anyway.</p><p>Lou appeared by her door, their buddy in tow still in her pajamas even though she herself was dressed for the day already. Toni's cloud stamped pajamas were looking outrageously childish against the royal blue velvet of Lou's jacket.</p><p>"Good morning, gorgeous," Lou said, her voice as smooth as the fabric of her jacket.</p><p>Debbie rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands and gave them the nicest smile she could manage as she sat up against her bedpost. "Don't swoon just now."</p><p>The blonde approached the bed and allowed Toni to slip from her arms into it. "I need you to watch her this morning. Our mark is back in the city, I've got some look out to do."</p><p>Debbie nodded thoughtfully, quickly running all the info about their heist through her mind while Toni crawled over the sheets until she found the perfect spot to nest on the hollow of her lap.</p><p>"Can't that weird lady keep an eye on her?" Asked Debbie about their neighbor, an middle aged lady that adored Toni. She encircled her arms around the toddler and slipped one hand through her soft Scout Finch bowl cut, bringing her head close, burying her nose in her hair. If you told her a year ago that she would find the smell of baby shampoo absolutely disarming, she would laugh at you.</p><p>Toni sunk into her and reached out to the Rolex, playing with the clasp.</p><p>"Ellen moved out," Lou said. "And no, I can't take her with me," she added before Debbie could protest. "I'm leaving now. She already had breakfast. Please be both of you alive when I come back." She kissed the corner of Debbie's mouth and the top of Toni's head before leaving, her signature hello and goodbye for them.</p><p>Debbie waited for the sound of the front door slamming, afraid she would be caught talking to someone whose vocabulary is limited to her name, something that resembles the word "apple" and incomprehensible mumblings. "Who put her in charge? I know I didn't. Did you?"</p><p>The kid clasped the watch around Debbie's wrist and looked up at her, proud of her work.</p><p>"You're a little magpie, aren't you?" Debbie smirked.</p><p>It wasn't the first time she was alone with Toni. They were always on their own toegether for short periods of time, a morning or an afternoon, even if Lou had less shifts at the pubs now. She had no idea what to do if Lou spent more than five hours away, though  - probably hand Toni to a Petco and expect her clean and fed at the end of the day.</p><p>She got out of the bed, put one of Lou's records on, had her breakfast peacefully reading the Times and occasionally handing Toni a grape, took a bath with the kid ("we don't need all the ducks, let's take some out of it," she said, convinving Toni they only needed a couple of ducks, one hippo, an adult woman and a toddler in the tub).</p><p>After, she sat on the living room couch while the kid played by her feet and revised her checklist for their heist, remaking her list of tasks for the next days. Toni was trying to get her involved in her playing, cornering her into dividing her attention between her list and the kid. She slipped onto the floor, scribbling the notepad by the coffee table and moving Toni's blocks with her free hand, an exercise of multitasking.</p><p>The turned on the TV at some point, just to create some noise in the room now that the record was over, but the images on the screen made her drop her pen and stop her hand holding a cube mid air.</p><p>Well, that didn't make any sense. Planes crashing against buildings? In New York City?</p><p>"That's fucked up, kid," she mumbled under her breath.</p><p>She stared at the screen and, as she tuned down the reporter's voice over the same atrocious images, she noticed the sound of sirens at a certain distance.</p><p>For how long was that happening? What the fuck was happening? She kept asking herself.</p><p>World Trade Center, the woman on the TV said. Manhattan.</p><p>She knew that block. Lou was in that block.</p><p>"That's fucked up, kid," she repeated, eyes running through the screen, the scene repeating itself over and over again.</p><p>What if their mark was near that building and Lou followed her in? What if she was just passing by it when that happened? What if she was just in the lobby because she followed an executive worth pickpocketing? She kept repeating Lou's name, praying as if she was an entity that she was safe.</p><p>It didn't take long for Toni to feel her agitation and grow anxious as well, whining and asking to be held.  So that's what she did, holding the kid on the hollow of her crossed legs; there weren't other options and she could use someone to hold onto herself.</p><p>Before that day, Debbie thought she knew the meaning of the word relief, she didn't need to look it up a dictionnaire; relief was a feeling of reassurance and relaxation following release from anxiety or distress, or something like that. But from that day on, though, relief was the sight of Lou walking through the front door of that Brooklyn apartment around noon.</p><p>There were crinckles on her royal blue velvet jacket, sweat all over her neck and face, drenching her shirt, and her short blonde hair was disheveled, in a way so very different from when she did it on purpose.</p><p>It was a no brain, Debbie threw herself at her, holding her impossibly close, trying to ignore the way she could feel Lou's hands trembling as she hugged her back.</p><p>"I'm fine, honey," Lou said, mouth against Debbie's hair, hugging her back just as tightly. "Just fine."</p><p>Debbie pulled back and held her face in her hands and checked her up close. No bruises, no scratches. She ran her hands through her neck, shoulders, arms, making sure she was in one piece. Her Lou was fine, just fine, as she said. They didn't lie to each other.</p><p>"What was that? How did you-" Debbie hurled out the words.</p><p>Lou leaned in and pecked her lips firmly, kindly silencing her. "I'm okay." She sighed, looking too pale for her words to be true. "Are you okay?" She looked between Debbie and the kid, who made her way to them, jumping ang huggin her leg, begging for her attention. She leaned down and picked her up, holding her close, little legs and arms clinging onto her just as tight.</p><p>"We're good. We're good now," Debbie said, hugging her again, kid pressed between them. She hadn't noticed until that moment, when it started to slow down, how fast her heart was beating.</p><p>Lou just nodded back, one arm around each one of them. "Poor kid, don't understand a thing, do you?" She buried her face on the top of Toni's head. "Neither do I," Lou added in a whisper, closing her eyes and sighing.</p><p>They didn't let go for a while.</p><hr/><p>They spent the day in, wanting to avoid the news but it took them hours to turn off the TV. They checked on with their friends when the phone lines started to clear up and tried to not speculate too much if one of them didn’t answer. There was an unspoken fear, a uncertainty in the air, that even people like them didn't have any idea of how to deal with.</p><p>Lou was there when the first plane crashed the against the first tower, minute one from a day that never seemed to end. She didn't actually see the crash, but she remembers wondering why was that plane flying so low, which she had discarded it as an unusual approach to JFK - who could know, after all? She didn't think twice when the realization of the moment hit her and the other people on Greenwich Street in the moment, she just ran away to home, lower Manhattan to D.U.M.B.O, as fast as she could. And Debbie couldn't be more greateful for it: whatever savior complex Lou sporadically showed was overcome by fear and the good old survivor instinct humans are wired with from birth. But that was a version of the story Debbie had to wait a few days to hear. By that moment, all Lou had to say was that she ran home and that the city was even crazier than the usual.</p><p>She was quiet, even quieter than the usual. She discarded her clothes and took a long bath after spending a couple of hours sitting on the corner of the living room, silently playing blocks with Toni, shoeless. If not for the dust on the discarded jacket and her expressionless face, it looked just like a normal day. Debbie couldn't help but be grateful for the sense of domesticity that the sight of Lou playing with the kid brought her even if it made her feel like a housewife from the 60s.</p><p>The blonde passed the day answering Debbie's questions with the fewest possible combination of words. And Debbie knew better than to ask anything Lou wouldn't be able to answer like that, so she kept it simple. Is this dry-cleaning? She asks about the jacket before picking it up from the floor and putting it away. Is pasta okay for dinner? Can I turn off the TV? Did you see a Rolex? I think magpie here tucked it away. </p><p>"Hey, lay with us," Lou asked Debbie, holding her hand delicately before heading to her bedroom that night.</p><p>Out of all the nuances that composed their relationship, different beds and different bedrooms was the one that even they failed to understand. They liked their own space, they liked the liberty of having a place to consume the one night stands that would never mean to them what they meant for each other, they liked the choice to share a bed when they wanted and not because was the only option, and they felt comfortable that way.</p><p>It had been discussed moving into a three bedrooms now that Toni had outgrown her portable crib, but Debbie was unhurried about it, part of her afraid that it would make their situation feel too permanent. Also, the kid was going through a phase that no matter where she feel asleep, they would always find her tucked against Lou in the morning.</p><p>"She is a kicker," Lou told her as they laid face to face in the semi darkness of her room. Toni proved her point shifting in her sleep, one chubby little foot crashing on Debbie's tight.</p><p>"I'll kick back," Debbie said with a smile.</p><p>The city lights entering Lou's windows were casting funny shadows on her face. Thei neighborhood was unusually quiet, although there was a palpable vibration in the air.</p><p>A bridge way from there, there was tragedy, death, loss. A scenario unimaginable enough to break and burn even the strongest wills and minds. A day that seemed to be ending, but it was just beginning.</p><p>Debbie had no idea what was going on in Lou's mind. She hadn't seen what she saw, she hadn't felt what she felt. It humbled her; she always knew what was going on in that beautiful head. She reached over the asleep kid between them, finding one of Lou's hands with her own. She brought it to her lips, kissing the knuckles, caressing the soft skin of the back of her hand, quieting fears she wasn't aware they could have.</p><p>When she fell asleep, Lou's blue eyes were still on her.</p><hr/><p>Lou made coffee in the morning. The TV was off and the light of day looked foreign, uninvited, entering their living room and bathing the couch, the coffee table, Toni's toys in the corner, the expensive stolen Persian rug. There was a calmness inside the apartment that was, in some way, unfair when compared to the chaos outside.</p><p>The blonde was sitting by herself on the kitchen counter, mug in hand, short hair pulled behind her ears, the white tank top and soft flare pants she used as pajamas still on when Debbie got up – a oppose state from the first view Debbie had of her last morning.</p><p>It could be a common morning, when she would sit like that with Toni in her lap and feed her between her sips of coffee. But it wasn't there was nothing about common in that world anymore, the feeling was that there would never be again.</p><p>"Morning, gorgeous," Debbie said, trying to lighten the mood and received no answer. She didn't expect any. She poured herself a mug. "The kid is a kicker. I may or may not have a broken rib."</p><p>"I didn't see her," Lou told her on the same beat, as if it was an urgent matter. "She wasn't at the shop."</p><p>Their mark was an old woman called Ingrid Davidson. She owned an antique shop down Greenwich Street. You had a privileged view of the towers from there, Debbie knew from the stolen time she spent watching the music box kept on the shop's windows they were planning on stealing. She had never really thought about that proximity until yesterday, now it sounded like a missed detail, an important information that everyone overlooked.</p><p>"I was across the street from it when it happened. It was so loud, oh my God." Lou squinted her eyes as she recalled the memory. "There was noise and people screaming and dust and- and I ran away from it. I thought the world was ending."</p><p>It was the most she had spoken since yesterday's morning. Debbie delighted herself at rediscovering her accent and voice tone all over again. In a lighter situation, she would have attacked her lips right then and right there. </p><p>"I'm glad you did," Debbie said, looking down at her own mug. "That music box wasn't worth the risk anyway," she added, because she didn't know how to say anything that would mean to Lou that she had no idea how relieved she was to have her alive and well. Words were never her thing, Lou knew that.</p><p>The blonde nodded distractedly.</p><p>There was a pregnant pause before she spoke again. "We have to take care of her."</p><p>"Davidson?" Debbie asked, pouring way too much sugar into her mug.</p><p>"What?" Lou shook her head. "No, Toni."</p><p>"She is still asleep," Debbie said, remembering struggling to untangle the kid from herself as she left the bed minutes earlier. "I'll cut her some apple slices when she wakes up."</p><p>"No, not that." Lou shook her head. "You have to- she is not going anywhere, Deb," she said, frowning at her mug.</p><p>"Yes, I know, no one wants her."</p><p>"No. She can't stay because no one wants her; she has to stay because we want her to-"</p><p>"Lou-"</p><p>"No, listen." Lou's voice was firm. She ran a hand through her face and pushed her fringe up. "When I was down there and chaos ensued, you were my first thought." She looked at Debbie, warm eyes that always made Debbie’s knees weak never so soft before. "I thought about you and if you were safe. It was the only thought in my mind for a fraction of second because I knew you were okay, I know you." Her voice softned at the end and Debbie unconciously took a step closer. "The second thought was Toni, but that one lasted. I was terrified because I knew I was the only person thinking about her."</p><p>She paused, rubbed her eyes, maybe to stop her tears, maybe to brush away the tiredness in her eyes. Probably the later, it was clear to Debbie now that her partner hadn't slept that night, mind running through the events of the day and much more.</p><p>"When mom passed I was on my own," Lou said, staring at a distant spot on the kitchen wall. "I knew no one was going to think of me when something like that happened." She paused and looked down at Debbie again, their height difference larger with Lou sitting on the counter. "And you have to have someone that thinks of you at those times, Deb." She looked down at her palms, a vulnerability on her face that Debbie was the only live soul that had ever seen it. "I was fifteen; she is one. I can't be the only one thinking of her anymore. What if I had died in there, Deb? What was going to happen? I-"</p><p>Debbie was smart enough not to tell her she was probably going to send Toni to a Petco for bath and grooming. She rested her palms on Lou's knees, standing between her knees in front of her by the counter.</p><p>"If we are going to do this...and we are doing this already, it has to be all the way," Lou said, her voice firm again. "We have to be- we have to be her home. Either you say she is not going anywhere or I can't do this anymore. I can't live expecting someone to come all of the sudden and take her away and then keep worrying if they are taking good care of her." She sighed, fringe falling back on her face. "You've been my partner in- in everything for all these years. I need you to be my partner in this too."</p><p>There was a density in the air. Debbie understood what she meant, what she was being asked to. She wanted to know if Lou did as well. "Honey, you are you sure of what are you asking me?" She asked after a beat.</p><p>Lou shook her head. "I can't be sure on my own. It takes you and me to be sure, you know that."</p><p>Oh, all the scrapes Lou got her out from. All the times Lou threw punches, even hating offense, even hating having to wash blood out of her rings, because of her. All the ways Lou was there for her. All the devotion, all the loyalty, all the love. She didn't have to think about any of those things at that moment, they were all always in the back of her mind, they were always at arms reach, for a kiss, for a hug, for having her hand held.</p><p>She joined their palms together before intertwining their fingers as she made the decision, one of considerable size, with just a few words. For Lou, she would anything.</p><p>"Okay," she said, as she nodded slowly, taking in the moment. "She is here, she is ours. No one is taking her away." She felt like completing the sentence. "From us. She stays."</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. sunburn</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“It’s the third one this year,” Debbie said picking up the broken round glasses from the kid’s hands. “How is this happening?”</p><p>Toni watched as Debbie examined the object, curious brown eyes shifting between her face and the broken lenses. “I fell on my face, of course.”</p><p>“Lügner,” Debbie said with a smirk.</p><p>“Ich schwöre, es ist wahr,” Toni argued back firmly.</p><p>And the problem of raising a perfect liar, Toni had lost her tell months ago.</p><p>“Is someone being mean to you at school?” Debbie asked, and then rethought her question. “Are you being mean to someone?”</p><p>Toni shook her head. Her hair was still short, brown and straight, but she couldn’t stand the bowl cut anymore so they kept it in a neck length bob cut. She had been wearing glasses since was four and they found her red faced inside the bathtub, frustrated she couldn’t understand the words on the label of a shampoo bottle. Since she started school earlier that year, they started to break way too often.</p><p>Debbie sighed as she got up from the sofa and retrieved an eyeglasses case from one of the bookshelves. Since the first time she came home with them broken, they knew better and kept an extra one. She removed the purple-rimmed round mini Ray-Bans from it and put them on Toni’s face. “Spares. Remember, every time they break I’m one step closer to whatever you are hiding from me, kid.” She pinched the small button nose, making Toni scrunch her face.</p><p>Toni gave her a sweet smile as if she didn’t have a thing to hide in the world. “Danke.” And ran off to her bedroom.</p><p>At the tender age of seven, Toni already had in her what many people struggle for decades to find. While other kids struggled to learn how to read and add, Toni had been reading since she was three and counting two decks of cards in a game. German came naturally to her as she was introduced to the language as a toddler. She was polite, charming, and calm as a lake, all traits that you usually don’t get from children.</p><p>Debbie was just unsure where all of that came from. She spent hours mulling over it: is it blood or environment? Both? The early reading had anything to do with those thick English novels Lou used to read as bedtime stories because they didn’t have the usual children titles on their shelf? Did she pick up the German because Debbie did it right or because she was predisposed to be good with the language? Was she great because she was born like that or because they made her great?</p><p>She knew there weren't right answers for her questions, so she just enjoyed the good moments when Toni wasn’t annoying her on purpose – because she already knew how to push her buttons – and tried to be thankful that they had managed to do this right for almost seven years now.</p><hr/><p>It was early May when Debbie received her letter. It was signed as Mr. and Mrs. Pena but she knew it was from her parents. They were inviting her to spend a few days in their villa in Spain.</p><p>"Thief in retirement in Spain? What a cliche," Lou said. "Promise me we will do better." She had her face hidden behind the daily edition of the Times.</p><p>They were enjoying the end of spring in New York with a nice brunch on an outside table in their favorite coffee shop at the time, already missing the free hours they managed to have while Toni was at school that would be gone within the summer. The weather was just warm enough for them to hang their jackets on the back of their chairs, the food was heavenly.</p><p>"Of course we will, we are going to the South of France," Debbie told her with sarcasm. She sipped her coffee, frowning as she noticed she poured less sugar than her ideal into it.</p><p>"Are you going?" Lou asked.</p><p>Debbie squinted her eyes in thought behind her sunglasses. Did she want to see her parents? Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes, if they behaved. "Danny is going."</p><p>That was enough of answer to Lou. "You can always run away and spend the time in Ibiza."</p><p>"You know I'm a Saint Antoni person," Debbie said. She paused, testing the effect of her next phrase. "I'm supposed to take Toni."</p><p>Lou frowned and put down her newspaper. Her sunglasses were up her hair, a curious frown visible between her brows. "Why?"</p><p>"You should come, too," Debbie said, ignoring her question and taking a bite of scrambled eggs.</p><p>Debbie herself was trying to not think too much about why they wanted Toni there. They definitely weren’t going to claim her guardianship, as they made obvious in several other correspondences from the past years. Maybe they just wanted to meet her, innocently and friendly - as unlikely as it was for Oceans.</p><p>"It's an Ocean's thing," Lou said, opening her newspaper again. "The invitation doesn't extend to me."</p><p>"Just say you need a break from us," Debbie said, with her mouth full, a bad habit she had passed onto Toni, that Lou had given up complaining about.</p><p>"Yeah, that too. Can't wait to walk around home gloriously naked."</p><p>A young man was just passing by them on the sidewalk and turned his neck to look at her and Debbie smirked. In his place, she too would wonder how that gorgeous figure sitting across from her looked naked. Luckily, she didn’t have to wonder.</p><p>"So, can you get us the passports?"</p><hr/><p>"Why do I have go?" Toni asked her during the flight, fidgeting with her seatbelt.</p><p>"You were invited," Debbie answered, undoing the kid's seatbelt so she felt more comfortable. They still had five hours inside that plane.</p><p>"And Mom wasn't?"</p><p>"Lou had other plans," she answered, because Toni didn't need to hear about how Lou's presence was, if not a inconvenience anymore to her parents, an issue neither parts involved had the energy or the will to discuss.</p><p>And, as classy as always, Toni let it go. She had a juice box and The Secret Garden on her lap, she was distracted. Debbie allowed herself to do the same.</p><p>"They are your parents?" The kid asked, as Debbie was about to doze off.</p><p>"Yes, they are," she said containing a sigh.</p><p>"What are they like?"</p><p>Debbie still had a lot to teach Toni about not seeming eager when you are eager. In another time, she decided. "They are nice enough,” she answered, hoping to soothe the kid. “And Danny and Tess will be there, you like them.”</p><p>"Do your parents know me?"</p><p>"No. They knew your mother,” Debbie said, realizing she herself had mostly forgotten what Judy Ocean Bellevile looked like. If Toni was starting to show her mother's figure, she would be unaware of it.</p><p>Toni nodded in understanding, a hand running through the bookmark shaped like a giraffe she made in art class. "Did you know her?"</p><p>It wasn’t the first time Toni showed curiosity about her parents. She had previously asked about them when she was around four and noticed she didn't have a mommy and a daddy like the other kids, but it was a general question that they handed very well, thank you very much.</p><p>Well, Lou did.</p><p>“They passed when you were very little, baby,” Lou told her, very kindly but without any trace of condescension, what Debbie always admired, since Lou managed to treat Toni like the most precious thing in the world but never underestimate her intellect. “Sadly, they couldn’t stay so Deb and I are in charge of you now.”</p><p>It satisfied Toni at the time. There were no further questions, Debbie considered the kid didn’t even understand the concept of dying back then. She moved on from it by starting calling Lou by ‘mom’.</p><p>“Just let her be,” Lou said as Debbie heard the title for the first time and gave her a questioning look. “She will get over it.”</p><p>But Toni didn’t get over it and the title stayed.</p><p>This time, though, Toni was asking specifically about her parents, as human beings, with an understanding that she didn’t have back then, and Debbie wished Lou was the one dealing with it.</p><p>"Yes. We were cousins. We used to play together when we were your age," Debbie said, fearing already unprepared to the next question Toni had in line about her mom.</p><p>"Do I have other cousins?" Toni asked.</p><p>"I don't think so, kid," Debbie said, relieved that was an easier question. After all, her knowledge of Toni's genealogical tree was vast since she spent months in vain chasing after another kin willing to keep her. "We are all you have, I'm afraid."</p><p>Toni shrugged and sipped her apple juice through the green straw. "That's fine. I like you."</p><p>"I like you too," Debbie should have said, but she just rolled her eyes with a lighthearted smile and sipped her own drink – a way less sweet and way more alcoholic one.</p><p>Her watch – Danny’s watch – informed her it would already be morning by the time they landed.</p><hr/><p>Susan Meyers and her daughter Lily - Lou kept their aliases simple and short - arrived in Andalucia on a Saturday morning.</p><p>As they were leaving the airport, Toni pulled on Debbie's hand lightly, signaling her to bend down to her level. "Am I Lily for the entire trip?" Toni asked in a whisper to her ear.</p><p>"No, to the Oceans you are yourself," Debbie said, squeezing her hand. She looked around and found her father's face waiting for them by the parking lot, under a sun cap and sunglasses, leaning on a Jeep. "Just be yourself, okay?" She told the girl before getting up and walking to Frank Ocean.</p><p>The retired life of the Oceans was as near as a thief could get to paradise. Their villa was gorgeous, a tasteful mix between contemporary and the traditional architecture of the town. They had a pool, even if their backyard was the beach, they had a couple of employers in the house and a Golden Retriever named David.</p><p>Toni was less scared of Frank and Hilda than she was from David. Lou always said that growing up with no other kids around often, Toni probably thought of herself as an adult already so older people never intimidated her. It was rather amusing to watch Frank’s startled face as she shook his hand with firmness and introduced herself, name and last name. She did no different with Hilda when they got to their home, but was sweet enough to pay a compliment about the house before running to hug Tess and to spend the rest of their stay by Danny’s side, with whom she was obsessed.</p><p>“She doesn’t really looks like any of them, does she?” Hilda asked, examining the kid.</p><p>“Those are the Oceans eyes,” Frank said but Lou had said it many times before and it didn't surprise Debbie. “Take off your glasses, junior, show her.”</p><p>Debbie almost protested. They had worked so hard for Toni to finally lose her shame of the frames only to Frank fucking Ocean come in and ruin everything, but the kid did as she was told with her chin up, almost defiant, before putting them back. Their progress wasn’t ruined, it was being used.</p><p>A double guest room was theirs for the stay, just across the hallway from the room Danny and Tess were staying for two days now. They had a view of the shore and Debbie allowed Toni to keep the bed nearer the balcony.</p><p>Dinner that first night was uneventful but the food was delicious and so was the Portuguese wine. There were jokes and stories to throw around. Debbie could only hope Danny had enough stories of successful cons to share all night so she wouldn’t have to share her own.</p><p>Because she had her good ones, sure. Like the stamp collection in San Francisco or the pair of bed lamps used by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor but they all sounded so pale, so simple, so unworthy sharing when compared to Danny’s. She knew they weren’t any of that, really, she knew her jobs were sophisticated and subtle to a level Danny could only dream of, but Danny’s jobs were right on Frank’s style. Invasive, too daring for their own good, straight up reckless.</p><p>Her cons were enough to keep them afloat those days and with Toni’s monthly trust fund parcel, they were okay. They paid the bills, their three bedrooms in Brooklyn Heights, occasional design clothes and furniture, trimestral supplies of new glasses for Toni and whatever else they needed they couldn’t or refused to steal. </p><p>“How is Lou?” Hilda asked in a not so sincere polite tone.</p><p>Debbie was almost surprised they all shifted their attention from Danny to herself. “She is fine.”</p><p>“Still working together?” Frank asked, pouring himself more wine.</p><p>She noticed how Toni’s ever so perceptive eyes ran along the faces around the table. She was studying the room, those people's opinion about the woman she called mom. </p><p>“Yes,” Debbie said because a longer answer would be nothing but unnecessary.</p><p>“Good,” he said and she didn’t believe. “Just don’t get too dependent on a right hand man. An Ocean must do something on their own every now and then to prove it is our merit.”</p><p>In all her years in this family, she couldn’t remember him ever telling Danny to drop Rusty for a job or two and do something for himself but she wasn’t going to let that get to her anymore.</p><p>She checked Toni, almost expecting her to say something, but the kid had a light frown on her face, the one that doesn’t quite make her scrunch up her nose, only to crease the patch between her light eyebrows. She had judged the situation unworthy of a comment and Debbie applauded the choice.</p><p>“I’ll keep that in mind,” Debbie said, not wanting to dive into the matter that was Lou to Frank Ocean. “Oh, no, mom, she can’t eat shrimp,” she said to Hilda before the woman could pour paella onto Toni’s plate. “She is allergic, it will kill her.”</p><p>“It wouldn’t kill me,” Toni said.</p><p>“You want to try?” Debbie asked her rhetorically and the kid let it go.</p><p>“When you’re back in New York I can arrange you a contact in the art field. They have a scheme right up your alley,” Frank pressed back on the matter. “It’s just you, of course.”</p><p>“I’ll think about it,” Debbie answered. Then, decided she couldn’t handle his attention anymore. “Danny, tell them about last summer in Martha’s Vineyard.”</p><p>And for the rest of the dinner, the attention was back on Danny.</p><p>After dinner, she watched from the living room arc as Toni charmed both Danny and Frank playing cards. She told Toni to go to bed when her bedtime came and Danny disappeared at some point too, probably taking Tess to a night walk on the beach as he had promised. </p><p>“I have plans for us tomorrow morning,” Frank told her as they were the only ones in the room. “You and I.”</p><p>It was almost scary the thought that he wanted alone time with her. Shouldn’t he be spending every single minute of this vacation with his favorite child and just allowing Debbie to tag along?</p><p>“Sure,” she said and nodded. “I’ll be up.”</p><p>When she went back to the room she was sharing with Toni, she removed the open book resting on top of the sleeping kid, the glasses from her nose, adjusted the covers over her and turned off the bedlamp.</p><hr/><p>Frank and Debbie left the villa early morning after breakfast. Danny had promised to take Toni to the beach so she barely paid any attention to where Debbie was going without her.</p><p>They drove for an hour or so and ended up in a rural area, with beautiful green fields and a neat fence that disappeared from view behind an elevation. The sky was clear in blue and clouds seeming made out of ragged white cotton. There were cows and goats at distance, a building that looked like a stable long time ago and a large beautiful, but maltreated, farm house in the middle.</p><p>“Is this where you kill me for being a disappointment to your name?” Debbie asked when they got out of the car, only half-joking.</p><p>He laughed and started walking towards the bungalow. “You were always the funny one, Debbie.”</p><p>A fat man with a bright pink face received them. Frank greeted him as if they were old friends, but Debbie had never seen that man in her life. He wasn’t speaking Spanish or broken English, he was speaking as an American man. That was slightly alarming.</p><p>“Debbie, this is Larry, he is a cousin of Marc on his mother side. Or was. Was his cousin.”</p><p>Toni’s father’s cousin, Marc Belleville’s cousin. Good God, not a Belleville but the closest thing she saw of one in the last decade. Well, not counting the one she makes breakfast for every morning.</p><p>Larry O’Neill had been living in Spain for over ten years now. A retired bank fraud expert, he had decided to leave America searching for a quiet place for him and his wife - a tall woman with a snobbish look that received them coldly - to spend the rest of their lives. It was convenient that Europe had great casinos, his weakness, as himself said. He talked about his farms, his trips to Montecarlo, his love for horses. And, at last, about how he’d be glad to keep little Antonia’s guardianship.</p><p>“Where are your horses?” Debbie asked at some point, thinking about the abandoned stables.</p><p>Larry made a face. “We don’t have any at the moment.”</p><p>“Why?” Debbie pressed.</p><p>Larry shrugged. “I’ll find new ones soon.”</p><p>He was just a bank fraud old man, Debbie was a con. She wondered if Larry was really capable of fooling her father or if Frank just didn’t really care that Larry didn’t want Toni, he wanted her means. Toni was his next fraud to save him from his decadent life, probably in debt, stuck in a poor farm in Spain. In two weeks, her trust fund would be gone in one of his trips to Montecarlo.</p><p>“Dad, can I talk to you in private?” She asked.</p><p>Frank hesitated with the interruption for a moment, but got up anyway.</p><p>They went to the porch, out of the O'Neills earsight.</p><p>“He is not keeping her,” Debbie said, plain and simple.</p><p>"I thought you wanted a way out," Frank said and she knew: it wasn’t that he had been fooled, he just didn’t care.</p><p>Debbie stared at him. Did he actually believe she could just handle the kid like that? She didn’t even handle her jackets like that. Toni may have been an inconvenience once but now she was something else. A pet, a friend, a sidekick. Or just Toni, whom she had to look out for until she was eighteen, at least.</p><p>"I did," she said. A long time ago, she wanted to add. Now she would be lost for a week or two – maybe more – if the kid suddenly vanished from her life with her broken glasses and semi innocent antics. "But I'm not doing it now."</p><p>"Well, It's your choice,” he said, in that unreadable tone.</p><p>Debbie was not only good at lying, she was excellent. To strangers, to friends, to partners, and to herself. Her favorite lie at the moment was that she didn't choose anything about Toni. She didn't choose to get her, she didn't choose what to do with her, she didn't choose to grow fond of her, she didn't choose to raise her and she didn't choose Lou's devotion to her. To her, it all just happened and she was passive about it.</p><p>"Where were you six years ago?" Debbie dryly laughed looking around the property. "Where were those folks of her back then?"</p><p>That baby would be in the next flight from New York to Europe thae moment she had heard there was someone else keeping her. No questions asked, no goodbyes to say and no Lou to disappoint.</p><p>"You know we were keeping a low profile back then. And I just found them here recently,” Frank said. “But it doesn't matter, you can just take the opportunity now and move on.”</p><p>"No, I can't," Debbie said. "Back then it would be a choice. Now it would just be disloyalty." She wasn't sure if it was to Toni or to Lou - both, really. But she wouldn’t bring up Lou to him, not in this situation, she couldn’t let him know Lou was the main reason why Toni has stayed, he didn’t need any more topics to hold against her. She looked out at the point in which the fences disappeared from view. "She trusts me."</p><p>"I see," he said and followed her gaze. "This is a decision that is going to last, Deborah."</p><p>She nodded. "I'm aware.” There was no going back.</p><p>She sighed, and lied to herself one more time, saying she didn’t have another choice. It was easier like that, she didn’t have to deal directly with the source of those decisions. She would just put them on her dad for being an asshole, on Danny for being evasive, on Lou for being too fucking soft for a criminal, on Judy and Marc for being stupid enough to get that deep into trouble, but never on herself. That way, she never had to ask herself why she cared.</p><p>“She is coming home with me," she said and walked back to the car, without waiting for him or saying goodbye to Larry fucking O'Neal.</p><hr/><p>“So, who was it?” Danny asked, a couple of nights after the encounter as Debbie sat by herself on the living room.</p><p>She had sent Toni to bed with a bottle of sunburn relief gel and was flicking through a Napoleon Bonaparte biography she found on a side table. She sipped her glass of wine and looked up. He, too, was covered in the same green gel.</p><p>“If she can’t sleep tonight, I’m sending her to you,” Debbie said and a twinge of pain hit her. That was Lou’s phrase whenever Debbie gave Toni too much sugar – what happened too often. The thought hurt just a little bit, eased with the thought that tomorrow she would be home.</p><p>Danny rolled his eyes. “I couldn’t find the sunscreen. Also, it’s too late, she and Tess fell asleep on the bed watching a movie. We’re bunking together tonight, sis.”</p><p>He sat on the chair in front of her. Enough small talk. “Who was the guy?”</p><p>“You knew about it?” She asked.</p><p>“I knew there was someone interested,” he said.</p><p>Debbie shook her head. She felt tricked. She wanted to hard to believe her parents were trying to be warm and parental inviting Toni that she didn’t see it coming. She had a history of only wanting to see the things she wanted and ending up blindsided.</p><p>“Larry O’Neill is certainly interested in her money,” Debbie snorted.</p><p>Danny laughed and they fell in silence, feeling the quiet of the night settle in.</p><p>“Are you taking the art offer in?” He asked, as if that was the conversation they were having, knowing they understood each other's crooked line of thought and not worrying about it.</p><p>She gave him a look. He was the last person she expected to press her on this matter. Danny appreciated her jobs and adored Lou, why was he going in that direction?</p><p>“Don’t get me wrong, your jobs are amazing and the kid is fantastic,” Danny explained. “But that’s not all you can do.”</p><p>“And I don’t need you to tell me that,” Debbie retorted, defensive, always so defensive.</p><p>“Of course you don’t. Just know that I can’t wait to see what you are doing next,” he said and Debbie knew her was being sincere. “I think you are a genius. I want everyone to see that, including him.” He was talking about Frank.</p><p>She had to contain a smile at the compliment. A rare and honest one that one of them was probably going to die before it was repeated.</p><p>“What are you doing next?” She asked, craving to shift the conversation away from her and her disappointing career of minor heists. She was going to deal with that by herself another day.</p><p>“You heard Reuben is sick, right?” He pushed himself closer to her on the armchair he was sitting. “You’re gonna love it.”</p><hr/><p>"You should be in bed," Debbie said as she saw from the corner of her eyes the small figure appear on the deck.</p><p>Toni just stood there, caught in the act. She was just a small shadow against the indoor light coming from the living room.</p><p>The deck was bathed by nothing but the bright moonlight. Debbie was laying on a lounge chair near the rail, watching the ocean and the night waves, tasting the salt on her lips and feeling the wind against her face. She turned her head to have a better look of Toni and couldn't help but smile at the sight of her in her red plaid pajama trembling from the cold wind.</p><p>"Can't sleep?" She asked trying to mimic the soft and warm tone Lou used to ask the kid that question. Maybe Toni was missing Lou too.</p><p>"I was looking for you," Toni said, her gaze on the moon, distracted, maybe marveled. "You weren't in your bed I-"</p><p>"I wouldn't leave without you," Debbie said and occurred to her that that may not be clear to Toni. After all, Lou was the one throwing I love yous and kisses and endearing terms around to her. Lou was the mother duck. Lou was her favorite, she was sure. "You know that, right?"</p><p>Toni nodded. "Yeah," she said, vaguely. Her gaze went back to the horizon. Now she knew.</p><p>Debbie sat on the lounge chair, turning to face the kid leaning against the rail. She was just seven and could count two decks of cards, read like a preteen and keep an alias. What the fuck was that kid and what the fuck was she going to become? She couldn’t let anyone have her, right? That’s one of the reasons why she couldn’t let her go, why they had to keep her. Anyone else would just take advantage of her talents, but not them, they actually nurtured and cherished her.</p><p>"Did you enjoy Spain?" Debbie asked her, done with her own thoughts.</p><p>Toni shrugged. "I didn't see all of it." She turned on her bare heels and got on her tiptoes to look over the rail. "But I liked in here."</p><p>Debbie looked at her amused. Toni was a breath of fresh air. In a world in which everyone had a purpose, had a plan, had intentions - often bad ones - going home to someone who was still that innocent, who looked so genuinely happy when she solved the mystery before the characters in Scooby-Doo, was quite refreshing. She watched as a shiver ran through the little girl. "Come here, you're cold." She took off her cardigan and wrapped it around the kid when she approached, the length of it hitting her calves since Toni was short for her age. "Better now?" She asked, running her hands up and down through Toni's arms.</p><p>Toni nodded and turned her face to look at the ocean again and Debbie wondered if the waves attracted her in the same way they attracted herself.</p><p>“I'm telling you a secret," Toni stated. She had made up her mind and Debbie knew that was her way of opening up, either be about a opinion over cake flavour, either about something more serious, like this. "June Wallace is mean to me - sometimes - after lunch,” Toni said after a while and it took Debbie only a fraction of second to understand what she was talking about. “And she calls names."</p><p>"Names?" Debbie asked, still trying to keep up with the confession.</p><p>Toni looked up to the sky before turning to face Debbie."She said I was a freak raised by dykes," she said, looking down at her hands fidgeting with the buttons of the cardigan. She twisted the corner of her mouth as she said the last word. "That's how the glasses break. If she pushes me- if I hit my face on the floor.”</p><p>Debbie frowned slightly, a rush of cold anger running through her. Oh.</p><p>When Toni was around three, a couple of boys on daycare used to pull her hair and bite her arms. She would get home with purple marks on her still chubby members and beg them not to go there the next day. Debbie remembers speaking to the teachers and Toni was moved into another class. Then, she became the problem, repeating the treatment she was given before with other kids. That’s when Lou sat her down at gave her the rule number three of their household. (Number one, don’t lie or steal from each other and number two, no cats around because it makes Debbie's asthma really bad.)</p><p>“Number three: never throw the first punch,” Lou said, with a firm voice, and they never heard any complains of the kind from her teacher again. "Actually, don't throw punches, find another solution," it was the add-on the rule.</p><p>But that was bullshit, right? Debbie thought now, enraged with how terribly people have been raising their kids. That was mean, so mean, so terribile, it couldn’t possibly come from a seven-years-old so she probably had heard an adult say it first so she reapeated. Hell, were they criminals? Yes, but they were doing a much better job raising a kid than those parents.</p><p>Debbie sat closer to the edge of the lounge chair and reached to hold Toni’s both hands, pulling the kid closer to her. They were almost eye to eye, Toni still had to look up a little bit when Debbie spoke. “Next time, I want you to get up and punch her back, alright?”</p><p>“But mom said-“</p><p>“Lou tells you to not throw the first punch, but this is a different kind of first punch. It is the first punch but not the first blow. Are you following?”</p><p>Toni seemed to think for a couple of seconds and then nodded.</p><p>Debbie nodded back. “You can’t give people the power of bringing you down, kid. Never. Especially people who don’t mean a thing. Like June Wallace.”</p><p>The kid nodded again. Maybe she was still too young to understand the full implications of that advice – they often forgot she was just seven – but Debbie hoped it stayed with her until it made sense and for long after that.</p><p>"Do I have to go to bed now?" Toni asked, looking too young all of the sudden.</p><p>Debbie smiled and swapped the bangs out of the kid's face. "Lou is not here. I won't tell if you don't," she offered and laid back on the lounge chair, scooting to the side, leaving enough space for Toni to sit beside her.</p><p>The kid climbed in and took the place wordlessly.</p><p>They watched the waves in that summer night, their last one in Spain, until late hours. Well, at least Debbie did, since Toni drifted off to sleep half an hour later, warmly snuggled under her arm.</p><hr/><p>Lou picked them up at the airport in her old vintage Toyota. Debbie had a slight tan and sunglasses, Toni had a sunburn and a beam.</p><p>The kid ran to Lou and jumped into her arms, screaming as she got picked up from the floor.</p><p>"Oh, you got heavy," Lou said, playfully, peppering kisses all over Toni. "What did the Oceans feed you, baby?"</p><p>"Not shrimp," Toni said and when Lou laughed, Debbie wanted to thank the kid for putting that sound in her ears.</p><p>Debbie filled her in with the details of the retired life Mr. And Mrs. Ocean were living in Andalucia. Walks on the beach, dinners in the backyard, lots of day drinking. It could be worse.</p><p>"They have a dog," Toni informed from the backseat. "His name is David." And didn't mention how scared she was of him at the beginning.</p><p>"A brother I haven't heard about, Deb?" Lou teased but her partner wasn’t in the mood for banter. “Wait, where’s your watch?”</p><p>And only then Debbie realized Danny had stolen the watch back sometime during the trip. Her mind really was somewhere else.</p><p>They got back home and Debbie started unpacking, quiet and lost in her own thoughts and Lou knew better than to get on her way. She distracted Toni with her own unpacking and stories from her trip, leaving Debbie to her own devices.</p><p>"Dinner is ready," Lou knocked on the open door of Debbie's bedroom. "Chinese is here, I mean."</p><p>"Come in," Debbie told her. "I gotta tell you something."</p><p>Lou frowned slightly and sat on the bed. "What is it? Any Ocean gossip not adequate for tiny ears?"</p><p>But Debbie didn't laugh. She stopped in front of Lou, hands on her hips. "Toni has folks in Spain. Distant folks. Some asshole named Larry O’Neill and his wife. My father arranged for them to keep her," she said it all at once.</p><p>It took a beat for Lou to absorb the words. "What do you mean?"</p><p>"It’s just a misunderstanding," Debbie said and took a step away. "She isn't going anywhere, don't worry. I promised you."</p><p>"But they want her?" Lou asked, reaching for her hand and bringing the woman back closer to her, keeping her from turning away.</p><p>"They want her trust fund, that I know," Debbie turned back to her almost empty suitcase on the bed beside Lou.</p><p>"Can they take her?" Lou pressed the matter.</p><p>"They won't take her, I promised you," Debbie repeated. "Frank Ocean has our backs."</p><p>Lou nodded, she knew that was probably the most protected they could be. "So that's why they wanted Toni there."</p><p>"Toni's sunburn is not my fault," Debbie said, dodging the matter as she unpacked her toiletries. "Danny took her to the beach on his own and of course they didn't put on sunscreen and they both got like that, it was ridiculous."</p><p>"Frank thought you didn't want her," Lou went on.</p><p>"She is here, Lou. That's all that matters," Debbie said in tiresome tone, coming back from the bathroom.</p><p>Lou stood up from the bed and kissed her breathless. Her hand palmed over the side of Debbie's ribs, lips warm and hungry, devouring her in like the last sip of water on Earth. "Thank you," she whispered against her lips as they came up for air, touching their foreheads together. "For bringing her home."</p><p>Debbie nodded, eyes not leaving Lou's lips, dizzy from the previous kiss that was exactly what she needed to assure her she had made the right choice. Whatever it was for Lou, it was right. She kissed her again, stronger this time, trying to tell her that through lips, tongue and hands tangled in blonde hair. "She is not good at Spanish, she would never survive. If it had been Germany, I’d let her stay," she said, a little breathless, breaking the kiss again.</p><p>Lou nodded, amused with Debbie's attempt of hiding her own shakiness over the possibility of losing Toni even if she doubted the woman understood what she was feeling. She ran her hands through Debbie's sides, trying to soothe the worry she hid so well in herself that only Lou could see.</p><p>"She would toast there with no one to remember her to put on sunscreen," Debbie went on with the rant. "And they would take advantage of her talents, I just know they would. They would take her to Montecarlo and get her criminal records all dirty. And it would be just a matter of time until she ate a shrimp by accident and died." She looked slightly shook now that she was under Lou's eyes only. "That's the only reason I brought her back. It would be practically murder to leave her there. And we don't do murder."</p><p>The blonde wrapped her arms around her waist, bringing their bodies flushed together and mumbled agreements against the side of Debbie's head, allowing her partner to cling onto her, kissing her temple and mumbling sweet nothings just because she could. Wasn't that the magic of it all? Of having Lou? Of keeping the three of them together? To have this wonderful place in which she could just let go and be herself to the deepest layer of her being? She sighed, not wanting to think about this magical place seduced and scared her at the same time.</p><p>Debbie carried all those feelings with her from Spain, standing tall over Toni, shielding her, fighting to bring her back home, to New York, to their overpriced three bedrooms, to Lou, to their small unusual family. She knew by the way Lou was holding her boyd that she was grateful, that she was loved, that that was her place in the world. She could only hope she had the strength to not fuck it all up.</p><p>"Come on, let's have dinner before your kid eats the walls," Lou playfully mumbled against her hair.</p><p>Debbie laughed, pulling back from Lou and rolling her eyes. She was about to leave the room, Lou following her, when she turned back and pecked Lou's lips one more time. She pulled back, not knowing quite what to say. She could say she loved her, she could say she was wonderful, she could call her an angel. But she just opened her mouth and nothing came out. "You got me Lo Mein?" She asked, finally.</p><p>Lou smiled, as if those were the right words for the moment. "Of course."</p><p>"Alright," she said, before disappearing into the kitchen. “Drop that container right now, Antonia. You know very well the Lo Mein is mine.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. rough</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was a rough patch.</p><p>She was unhappy, Lou was someone she didn’t know anymore, the money from the bingo was unsatisfying, the risk didn't excite, she had no legacy to leave behind, everything worth saying about the Ocean name was Danny's. She couldn't pretend to not be bothered anymore.</p><p>"This is..."</p><p>"2 million dollars," Debbie said, looking down at her task list and then at Lou, whose face was intolerably unreadable to her. "What? You don't like it?"</p><p>Lou smirked under the low artificial light of their overpriced three-bedroom in Brooklyn Heights. "The money, yes. The plan, not so much."</p><p>There she was again, this new version of Lou. And to think that just ten minutes ago when she started explaining the job to her and she saw the glint of mischief in her blue eyes she thought she had her Lou back. But no, she had the stranger one, the evasive one, hard to read, impossible to reach.</p><p>Debbie eyed her as the blonde got up and discarded the boxes their dinner came in. What did she know about planing anyway? That was <em>her</em> job, as her father said, the credit was hers. Lou was just her right hand, right? "Enlighten me," she asked anyway.</p><p>"We can't do it without a crew. This won't work just the two of us," Lou said, coming back to the table. "And there's no way we can find who we need for it that quick, people we can trust, I mean. Danny got all of them, they're loaded now."</p><p>Debbie's face must've shown something because Lou squinted her eyes in that suspicious way that usually was sexy, but that night was just annoying.</p><p>"Oh, this is about Danny," Lou said as a realization, sitting oppose to Debbie again. “No wait, not just Danny, this is about the Oceans.”</p><p>"I don't know what you mean." Debbie faked innocence.</p><p>“You have to run over that plan again, Deb,” Lou said, her voice softer this time, as if something had reminded her she was talk to a friend. “Think it over-“</p><p>“Play it safe,” Debbie interrupted. “That’s what you mean." She sighed. "This is crime, Lou. It’s never safe. Remember when you used to love the thrill? When it turned you on and when we used to fuck on top of dollar bills? Remember? That was before you became a homemaker.” This time it was Debbie who forgot she was talking to a friend.</p><p>She was sure, so sure she had pulled very one of Lou’s strings, pushed to far, hurt her pride, hurt her character, that she was going to explode and yell at her and call her names and maybe they would have angry sex after – hey, that’s positive. But all of the sudden, her Lou was back.</p><p>Her Lou didn’t explode with her, not like this, not for this. Her Lou would push back, make her mind reel, put her back in her place. Her Lou took no bullshit from anyone, specially from Debbie. Her Lou was gravity, quiet anger, underskink explosions and precise words. Nothing was wasted with her, not even energy.</p><p>"Bullshit," Lou said with a shook of her head. She leaned in over the table and lowered her voice, not wanting to wake up Toni, blissfully already asleep in her bedroom. "Deb, you are rushing this and we are going to get fucked because your pride is hurt.” She sighed lightly, their faces not far from each other. “Tell me I'm wrong, darling," she asked, but Debbie knew she was actually begging.</p><p>Debbie raised a hand and ran her fingers over Lou's jawline, a shiver of desire running through her body as she noticed the way mischief was back in the blonde's eyes. "You are wrong, honey," she said, leaning in just a little bit more. "We are not going to get fucked," she said in a raspy voice, her breath over the blonde's lips.</p><hr/><p>It’s sad, really sad, that Lou was right.</p><p>The ride home from Atlantic City in the middle of the night in Lou’s vintage Toyota was the most depressing thing they ever did together and God knows they did everything together.</p><p>Debbie knew it was over. Not them, she was sure whatever they were it would never be really over, she could be in her death bed and she knew she still wouldn't have seen the last of that bleach blonde hair and baby blue eyes. But something definitely had reached an end that night.</p><p>She sat on the passenger seat in her sequin night dress, hair falling on her shoulders after removing her wig and stole glances at Lou on the driver’s seat. She wanted to be stealing those glances because Lou wearing a dress was rare and irresistible, not because she wanted to make sure Lou still could look in her eyes after what happened.</p><p>They had failed jobs before, of course. Their first two jobs together were a disgrace each and even then Lou stayed (and oh, how happy it had made Debbie at the time). So, this wasn’t about failing a job, she knew. It was about failing each other. She had failed Lou.</p><p>“Are you going to say something?” She asked Lou.</p><p>“Not right now, honey,” Lou answered, without taking her eyes out of the road. Her voice was monotone and in contrast with the endearing term, her jaw clenched just slightly.</p><p>It was past two when they reached home.</p><p>“We don’t have to talk right now,” Debbie said as they entered the apartment, hoping Lou would agree.</p><p>“You could’ve died,” Lou said, not looking at her. She discarded her shoes silently - out of habit since Toni was at Danny’s - and turned on the lights.</p><p>Debbie sighed. She wished Lou had agreed that they didn’t have to talk right in that moment. “There’s always that possibility.”</p><p>Lou ran her hand through her hair, impatient, tired, frustrated. “Don’t- don’t do that, please. Not tonight. Just listen to me." She turned to face Debbie, a trembling hand hovering over her cheek, as if she was afraid that the touch could burn her. "I need you alive, Deb." Her voice was broken and angry at the same time, a mix of everything Debbie never wished upon her. "Stop being so fucking reckless because I need you alive.”</p><p>“You know that things don’t always go as planned,” Debbie told her, deciding to soothe Lou’s rare moment of plain shakiness. She took a step closer and cupped Lou's face in her hands, forcing eye contact. She needed Lou to keep up with her train of thought and she needed it now. “What you wanted me to do, baby? I couldn't do anything different.”</p><p>"I don't know, okay?" Lou exploded, finally. "I just want to do something safer,” she admitted aloud, slightly leaning into Debbie's touch. “I want something that doesn't put me or you at gunpoint. I want something that doesn't leave my kid to fend for herself."</p><p>Debbie went from soothing to mad in a second. Was she really throwing the ‘my kid’ card? A kid that wasn’t even hers, or theirs in first place. And safer? What was that supposed to mean? She took a step back and busied herself with locking the front door, an excuse to not look in Lou's eyes. "What were you expecting? We're criminals, it’s never safe. If you want to feel safe, find a 9 to 5."</p><p>"Fuck you,” Lou spat. “ You know what I mean, you know I'm not asking for too much, I'm not saying we should stop.” Debbie knew she was trying hard to control her voice. “All I'm saying is that we have to be careful, we're not twenty anymore and we are not alone-"</p><p>Debbie snorted, turning back to her. "By choice."</p><p>"Yeah, one that I don't regret. Do you?"</p><p>Debbie shok her head and walked away from her. "Don't start on your good mom speech, please. I can’t handle it tonight."</p><p>Lou follower her into the apartment. "I will if you keep putting us and her in danger. Do you have any idea what happens to her if you get caught? Have you ever thought about it?"</p><p>"Yeah, she goes to Danny," Debbie stopped in her tracks and turned to face her again.</p><p>"Oh, Uncle Danny! What a terrific choice,” Lou yelled, ironically. “That kid can't get enough reckless tutors in her life, can she? How long until he ends up in jail again?"</p><p>"You knew what you were bringing her into, from the very beginning. You knew me, you knew the life we led. Don't ask me to stop now. You knew. This is you too-"</p><p>"No, it's not me. I would never do what you did tonight. Never." She sustained her look. “I would never do that to you, Debbie. Never.”</p><p>Couldn’t she see? Couldn’t Lou see that if Debbie had ended up with a gun to her head that very night was for her too? That it wasn’t just Debbie’s hurt ego? That she wanted Lou to have that glory too? She wanted Lou to have whatever she wanted? Her trips, her bike, her designer suits? At the time she actually believed in those lies she told herself.</p><p>“I can’t make you stop, can’t I?” Lou asked, her voice unusually small.</p><p>Debbie held her look. From all people in the world, it never occurred to her that Lou may be one to want her to stop. It hurt, she felt betrayed. "No."</p><p>Lou nodded, as if she already knew that answer. "Neither can she?"</p><p>Debbie rolled her eyes. Toni was the last thing she wanted to think about at that moment. "Don't be dramatic," she said, giving up on the argument, tired already that they weren't going to find a solution, that they couldn't both be satisfied anymore, hurt that Lou, her adored, precious, partner-in-life Lou was going against her even after having a gun to her head on the same night. It shouldn't be like that. "I'm here, I'll still be here in the morning, don't worry.” And because she wanted to hurt back as much as she was hurt, she threw her last shot. “I'm still playing house with you."</p><p>She touched the bruise of the barrel of the gun on her temple, irritated by the silly pain that was provoked when she touched the spot. She ran her hands through her hair and started making her way to her bedroom, glad about the space, frustrated that the heist wasn't good enough to end up with Lou's hands and lips all over her. She wanted to turn around to look at Lou’s face, see if she had caused enough pain but decided against it. She would apologize in the morning, she didn’t need that image in her mind before she fell asleep.</p><p>"I need time," she heard before she entered her bedroom, just when she thought the night was over.</p><p>She didn't turn to look at Lou, she just stopped, she still couldn’t bring herself to. "We both do, I think," she said before closing the door behind her and yes, just as she suspected, much more than just the night was over.</p><hr/><p>Lou moved out and Toni followed her - literally. She promised to come and visit her anytime she could, and share days of the week, but the kid has her own ideas and followed her all the way to her new place with someone that was more than a colleague but less than a friend. So Lou has no choice but to move back just a week after; they couldn't afford having an eight-years-old sneaking out on her own around Brooklyn at every chance she got and it wasn't fair to leave Debbie alone in that three bedrooms.</p><p>But routine changed after that. They still rigged bingo together sometimes since their usual harmony was gone and any other con would be a disaster, and they found herself hanging out together through the week for Toni’s sake, but the atmosphere of the home shifted. They had talked after that night, threw apologies around but none of them quite landed. They couldn’t speak the same language anymore, apparently.</p><p>Debbie knew Toni wouldn't really take sides at the same time she could feel the kid slip away between her fingers. Toni would always run to Lou, she was the one she called mom, she was the one making her homemade chicken nuggets, she was loving and caring and always her favorite. She knew it was a lost battle.</p><p>If there ever was one compliment Debbie always gave Toni was that, since a very early age, knew how to read a room. Since she was a baby she seemed to know when to cry and when to stay quiet, as a toddler she learned when to use her words and when to resign her new acquired ability to speak, and as a child she seemed to know better than most adults when to make herself visible. Toni grew up knowing that whatever there was between Debbie and Lou was one of a kind, very peculiar. She seemed to have learned all the nuances of their relationship without even being taught, she just read the room. She never asked Debbie what happened, and Debbie was suspicious she hadn’t directly asked Lou either, containing herself with the explanation that they were running jobs separately now.</p><p>And they were. Lou had found a semi legal gig supplying alcohol to pubs and clubs meanwhile Debbie contacted her father about the art scheme.</p><p>That's how she met Claude Becker and the rest is history.</p><p>“As in New Jersey’s Beckers?” Lou asked when she was told about it. They still talked, they still laughed together, but their song played in a different tune now - a not as good one as it did before. “I thought they were all gone by now.”</p><p>The Beckers were a second-class crime family. Always the bottom of the joke, never successful enough to be a match for other names like the Oceans or the practically extinct Bellevilles; they were the jesters. But Claude was different, he was ambitious enough to not settle for that preconceived notion people had of his name, and Debbie, frustrated with Lou’s need to cool down, adored that at the time.</p><p>She moved out after her first big cut working with Claude Becker. It was for the best, she told herself and Lou, in an awkward notice. She found a place in the East Village, all windows and large kitchen, and Lou and Toni moved to a two-bedrooms still in Brooklyn Heists so Toni could stay in the same school. It took some time, but they were comfortable at the end, all of them.</p><p>Debbie had the kid during weekends and every other day of the week if needed or wanted. None of them argued about this arrangement, it was obvious Toni was satisfied with it and Debbie knew better than try to rip her away from Lou. Also, she liked that Toni being casually around whenever she felt like was an excuse for Claude to not come over too often, since Toni hated him.</p><p>"Paintings are not fun,” Toni said one Saturday night over cheeseburgers on Debbie's new coffee table, when she was trying to introduce the kid into the con. "Just not fun at all." She bit her cheeseburger with passion. If her appetite was disturbing as a child, as a preteen it was of unknown precedents.</p><p>"Conning isn't always about fun, Toni," Debbie told her, refusing to be petty enough to ask her if she thought Lou's line of work was fun. (She knew it wasn't.)</p><p>Toni chewed thoughtfully. "What else it is about then?" She asked with her mouth full of food.</p><p>A flick of pain hit Debbie's chest as she thought about Lou scolding them for that terrible habit but she was by now a pro at ignoring it. "Money. Power. Sophistication," she said and bit her own cheeseburger.</p><p>"So how do you know when to stop? I mean, I thought cons stopped when the fun was over. But if there's other reasons...there's always money to go after, there's always power in taking things from someone and sophistication is subjective." Toni frowned her eyebrows, the bridge of her nose scrunching too, under her round glasses.</p><p>This was around the time Toni's moral crisis began. She wasn’t content or proud of being part in heists anymore as she was as a small child. She needed elaborated reasons to plot against someone – usual ones linked to values – and refused to do any petty crimes, like pickpocketing. She often plotted against Claude, giving Debbie ideas of how to turn the game and screw him or go on rants about how thiefness could be used to help poor people. That used to amuse Debbie, it was before the time it became pedantic.</p><p>Whenever Debbie faced this Toni, she wondered when that peculiar toddler became this soon-to-be clever young woman and how exactly they managed to make that, a comeback from the questions she had about Toni as a toddler and if they had any part on her brightness. Now, she knew, could see, could touch her and Lou's influences on the kid - the sense of fashion, the practiced habit of observing over acting, the dry humor, the introvertedness linked with polished extroverted abilities she used wisely - but there was also the part of Toni that was undoubtedly just hers.</p><p>"Sometimes they don't stop," Debbie said after chewing.</p><p>Then Toni’s brow frowned slightly, in that characteristic way, but she smiled soon after. “That’s crazy, Deb.”</p><p>And Debbie remembered how back when Lou and she first met it took a three times charm for their cons to work and still Lou stayed. She smiled back at the kid.</p><p>It kind of was crazy, wasn’t it?</p><hr/><p>Well, Toni was right, paintings were boring. So, almost an year after that Saturday night, when she had the chance of playing a slightly different part with the scheme, she did. And it was the end of her story with the paintings, her doom altogether, but she didn’t know that at the time she accepted Claude’s offer.</p><p>"How is the vodka stuff?" She asked Lou when she dropped Toni by their place to pick her things for school the morning of her termination.</p><p>"I can't complain," Lou answered, pouring her an unsolicited mug of tea.</p><p>They drank, side by side, sitting by the counter of Lou's kitchen. It amazed, comforted and humbled her to know she still had that, she still had Lou, even if not in her bed, in her home, in her cons. Lou was there, their relationship was there; a constant, morphing into whatever shape they needed to make it fit their lives.</p><p>That morning she had already made her mind: she was ready to get her old life back, even if she had to beg and/or play by Lou’s rules. After all, Toni was right, maybe heists were about fun, if not it, they had to be about sync, trust, team work. And no one else, not even Danny, was cut out to run jobs with her like Lou was. They were two of a kind, so fuck Frank Ocean and his superciliousness towards Lou. Debbie liked- not, Debbie loved her and loved working with her. She couldn't stray from this path anymore.</p><p>At that point, she already felt like she had her first foot out of the door of the painting business. And it was time to think what she would do the moment she was standing tall on both feet under the sunlight.</p><p>"Is there a place for me in it?" Debbie asked, raising an eyebrow.</p><p>Lou arched an eyebrow back at her. "Looking for a 9 to 5?" The words could've come out bitter but Debbie figures she deserved that. "I gotta tell you it's more 9 PM to 5 AM."</p><p>"Just in time to take the kid to school," Debbie said and then remembered. "Toni, come on, you’ll be late," she called over her shoulder.</p><p>Lou rolled her eyes scoffed, looking the other way. "Don't mock me."</p><p>"I am not mocking you, Lou," she said seriously, looking for her eyes with her own. "I have one last meeting tonight and I'm done. I'll take some time off, plan something bigger." She sipped her tea. "And foolproof," she added when she felt Lou letting go on her.</p><p>"Really?" Lou asked, that delicious tone of blue that Debbie always associated with trouble appeared in her eyes and Debbie knew they were on the same page again. Lou missed their old life, too.</p><p>"Really."</p><p>Toni came from her room, in her uniform, all tie, shirt, vest, tights, plaid skirt and black shoes, ready for school. "I have something for you," she said, slinging her backpack over her shoulder.</p><p>"For me? What is it?" Debbie asked, suspiciously.</p><p>Toni approached her in the kitchen, taking out of one of the backpack's pockets a watch and extending it to her.</p><p>Debbie recognized it right away. Danny's watch. The one going back and forth between them for decades now. After their trip to Spain, she got it back a couple years after until Danny got it back from her a few months ago.</p><p>"Making good use of your time with Uncle Danny I see," Debbie mocked, picking up the watch and running the pad of her thumb over the name engraved on the back.</p><p>She had her own plan of getting it back from him. It would be over dinner sometime in the next month, when he would get just tipsy enough to start talking about how great was his Vegas job in 2001 and how Debbie should take tips from him next time she decided to play with the big dogs. He would blink and it would be gone from his wrist and back onto hers. Now he wasn't even going to know what hit him - it was even better.</p><p>"He took it off to jump into the pool, can you believe it?" The kid smiled, looking between the two of them.</p><p>The whole 'will Toni take upon the family business' discourse had been suspended for a while now. The girl grew more and more inclined to virtues and viewpoints very foreign to Debbie about the thief life. Toni wanted to fix the world with it, she wanted to take power of good in her hands. Lou, Danny and Tess thought it to be cute, adamant about the kid being able to choose to be whatever she wanted and Debbie didn't want to pick up any more fights than necessary with them - they already disapproved enough of her new life. </p><p>Recently, Toni was invested in anything else more than she was in robbery and Debbie tried, she really tried, to engage in whatever the kid was interested that week. In a span of three months, she attended a school play, three softball games, one science fiction fair, two book releases and five chess matches and none of them lasted. Toni refused to pickpocket and whenever she was around the gallery, she would throw elaborate con ideas at Claude, who either didn't have enough sophistication to understand she was bringing a good point or just didn't care about taking advice from a girl.</p><p>So, when Toni brought that watch to her, the proof of a petty little shenanigan she so devotedly shared with her brother, Debbie was proud. Proud of the stealing and of how thoughtful the kid was - even though she knew the credits on the later were all Lou's.</p><p>She looked up at the kid and smiled back at her, fondly. "You little magpie," she cooed and ruffled her straight brown hair vigorously, even knowing Toni's tresses were so heavy they didn't mess. "Go now, you'll be late, the car is waiting."</p><p>"Bye Deb, bye mom," the kid said.</p><p>They eyed each other with amused smiles as Toni left. It was a tender moment and for the first time years, there was a promise of partnership, a perspective of future.</p><p>"I’m still going to make a legendary thief out of that kid" Debbie smirked, her eyes not leaving Lou's.</p><p>Lou laughed. "Good thing you're quitting your job then because that will require full time work. There’s a whole moral compass to destroy." And then her voice softened and she almost gave her a smile. "Go ahead, we'll be waiting for you."</p><p>That was the memory that stuck with her for her entire sentence.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. heist</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When she left prison, she was ready to make up for the last time. She had a plan, she had a partner (what a surprise), she had a purpose and she had a last name to honor.</p><p>She wasn’t entirely shocked to find Lou now owning a club and an old loft she lived in. It was very in character of her, honestly. Everything from the small patch of beach to the spike fences made sense.</p><p>“What a nice place to raise the kid,” Debbie commented, trying to casually ask about Toni, from whom she only had pieces of information. She was in her first year in Yale, eighteen, all fueled with good causes and a Robin Hood complex. Nothing of that really surprised her either.</p><p>“And the cats,” Lou said and smirked when Debbie froze. “Joking.”</p><p>The thing is: Debbie really meant when she said that Lou had to be there every step of the way. Without Lou, there was no heist, so this plan had to be not only safe for her, it had to be impeccable, because she knew Lou would not dive into it knowing it had even the slight chance of backfiring – and that had all to do with Toni. That’s probably why she hid that small piece of information about a certain Becker from her.</p><p>Debbie had her share of brilliant plans. Even if the job was small, she put any elaborate ballet choreography with her schemes. But this was another level of brilliancy. This was a masterpiece; Vivaldi's Four Seasons of the heists.</p><p>"We won't bring her into it," Debbie said that night, over their late take out dinner.</p><p>She had thought it over and over in prison. Should she give Toni this chance? This easy path into success? At the young age of eighteen already be offered a historic heist? It would be a peace offer, more than anything, a “hey kid, here’s a job, please like me” since they could find another young pickpocketer tremendously easy – it was New York, after all.</p><p>"Good, she wouldn’t accept it anyway,” Lou said after chewing.</p><p>Debbie stopped her fork mid air. “What do you mean?” Did Toni gave up for good of thief life? What a disgrace that would be. A Belleville-Ocean, one of a kind, throwing all her potential away.</p><p>She must have looked exasperated by the thought, because Lou had an amused look on her face. “She is picky, that’s all.” She shrugged.</p><p>Debbie raised her eyebrows. There was hope. “Picky?”</p><p>Lou shrugged. “She chooses her fights very well.”</p><p>“Well, it may be time for me to get together with my kid,” she said, defiantly.</p><hr/><p>Toni looked so grown up, she barely recognized her as she entered the loft that night.</p><p>She still had the same straight brown hair cut above her shoulders and her round glasses - what surprised Debbie, she thought she would've transitioned to contacts by now. She was dressed in a simple white t-shirt, skinny black jeans under her beige undercoat, and Nikes, carrying a brown leather messenger bag she dropped by the door.</p><p>"I thought you'd be taller," Debbie said with an amused tone, getting up from the couch to greet her, embarassingly flooding with affection.</p><p>Toni was around four inches shorter than she was. The kid - not much of a kid anymore - smiled and walked to her, wrapping Debbie in a tight hug, burying her face on her shoulder. "I thought you'd have a prison tattoo by now."</p><p>Oh, Toni wasn’t resentful. She was hugging her, welcoming her like a nice gift. She was warm and small and had a smell that resembled Lou's - they both smelled like home. Debbie wrapped herself around her, thankful for their height difference.</p><p>"You haven't seen my coccyx yet," Debbie said, awkwardly patting Toni's back. She pulled back to have a better look of the girl's face. Something like fondness ran through her as she noticed Toni's baby fat was gone and now you could see a sharp jawline and delicate chin. The Ocean's eyes were there, resembling hers more than ever, as some level of maturity downed on Toni now. “How long has it been? A week?" She tested the waters.</p><p>Toni, always the good sport, laughed. "A little more than that, I think. I love your hair, it’s so long," the girl said, touching the long brown waves.</p><p>Lou was off to the club, so Debbie was on her own with Toni for the entire night.</p><p>She was the still her sweet, loving, caring, morally superior kid she last saw almost six years ago. She was at Yale studying political science, volunteering in think tanks and writing essays against the pharmaceutical and medicine industries in America, trying to make a difference. She planned heists, too, - thank God! - more detailed ones with all kinds of goals, like money, justice, fairness, and dreamed of executing them. A Robin Hood of the 21th century.</p><p>Debbie found herself amazed by her. Specially because she had been expecting anger, fury, rejection, yelling and indifference. Instead, she found a lovely, no, a weird, hard to heat, home to come back to, with two sets of open arms. God help she didn’t screw everything up again.</p><p>"It sounds grand. So sophisticated, I like it," she said with her mouth full of food, as Debbie told her the plan about the Touissant over dinner.</p><p>"You want a role in it?" Debbie asked, disregarding her own decision of not giving this gift to Toni but instead give her a chance of building her own legacy, too enchanted by the girl.</p><p>"I would get in your way. I'm not ready for something that big," Toni said, simply, as she finished chewing. "But I am rooting for you, really.” She sounded to sincere, Debbie was taken aback. “Thank you for the offer." She bit her lip. "I- I appreciate it, really." She touched her hand over the table. "I'm proud of you."</p><p>"I haven't done anything yet," Debbie said.</p><p>"Yes, you did." Toni smiled. "You are a genius and you are going to rob the Touissant right under those elitists noses!"</p><p>She looked down at the watch on her wrist and back to the kid, savoring the thought that by stealing it back to her, Toni also engraved herself into the piece.</p><p>The last person that called her a genius was Danny. It meant a lot, really, to hear that again from someone she also loved so dearly.</p><hr/><p>Lou found Debbie on the rooftop when she came back from the club that night. Toni had gone to her bedroom to sleep hours ago, tired with the half day of classes and the train trip she took from New Haven to New York.</p><p>“You haven’t told me she was so…” Debbie said, looking out the horizon.</p><p>“So...” Lou pressed, half amused.</p><p>“Shrewd,” Debbie said.</p><p>Lou laughed and sat by her side on the beaten up wood bench. “Yeah, sometimes she is like that. Most of the times she is just a dork, though.”</p><p>“I didn’t expect so much...warmness...from her,” Debbie admitted. <em>Neither from you</em>, she almost added. “Being zero easy and being ten impossible, how bad were her teenage years?”</p><p>The blonde thought for a moment. “Four. It would be an eleven if you were around, though,” she said, but she had a smirk on her face.</p><p>“I don’t doubt that,” Debbie smiked back.</p><p>“No, but really. She was just- it was hard on her when you-“ She didn’t complete the phrase. “And when Danny-“ She didn’t complete that phrase either. “I think pain taught her a thing or two."</p><p>Debbie nodded. That made sense.</p><p>Toni grew up aware prison, dying and vanishing were always possibilities for their field of work, it was her origin story. Debbie going to prison may have been tough, but Toni was ready to stand tall over that and it shouldn’t really surprise any of them.</p><p>"She reminds me of you sometimes. When you were younger," Lou said and paused. "She is eager without being reckless. She is discreet, quiet, without being a wallflower. Ambitious, imaginative, careful. She is too smart for her years." Then she added, almost like a confession. "It worries me sometimes."</p><p>Debbie didn't look at her, it would make things too real. She stared at the dark skyline ahead of them and asked. "That she'll turn up like me?"</p><p>"That I can't handle her," Lou answered, honesty all over her syllables.</p><p>She looked at Lou. Under the moonlight she was even more pale. Her hand itched to touch her cheekbones, her lips, her hairline. It was been so long, too long. She didn’t expect them to fall back into each other arms after she left prison but she couldn’t help but wonder when was it going to happen. Was it now? In a week? After the heist? She knew it was going to happen, they were doomed to never escape each other, so if the risk of never touching Lou again couldn’t threat her, the waiting and expectation could.</p><p>“You are the only person who can handle me, Lou,” she said, whispery, looking into her eyes.</p><p>Lou gave her a half-smile. Not a smirk, a real one. She raised her hand and touched Debbie’s cheek with her cold palm. She ran her thumb over her lips, and Debbie almost burned at the thought the she was going to kiss them right there, with the clear night sky and New York’s pollution, on a rooftop of an old loft, but the blonde just gave her a lingering kiss on the cheek. “Good night, jailbird.” Like that, she got up and left.</p><p>Debbie sighed. She deserved that torture, she really did.</p><hr/><p>"You frame him, I walk. You won't get caught, I won't let you do that to Toni again," Lou told her that faithful day at the beach, when she heard about a part of their plan called Claude Becker.</p><p>It was a bigger than just themselves, yes. But she needed that closure so bad. Not just for herself, for the years he stole from her. From them.</p><p>She lost six years. She could've made up with Lou in those six years, spend all of them loving her, holding her, kissing her, making love to her as the world dissolved, making her a centerpiece in her life. That club could be theirs, that loft could be theirs. She could've been there when Toni went through all those firsts teenagers go through, she could've given her terrible advice, could've taken her to California to see the magpies, she could've been there when Danny, Lou and Tess took the kid to a Vegas casino for the first time at her 16th birthday with a fake ID. She coud've done so much if it wasn't for <em>him</em>.</p><p>So they discussed, and argued and threw their cards on the table.</p><p>“Just don’t expect me to clean up your mess with her again,” Lou said, at last.</p><p>Debbie wasn’t a fool, she knew Lou was the one nurturing Toni’s goodwill towards her through all the years she stayed inside. There were occasional letters and a few calls over the years, nothing excessive not to spark any suspicious of the law towards them and of course Lou was the one nudging Toni into it.</p><p>“You won't need to,” Debbie told her. “This is going to work.”</p><hr/><p>The plan moved on after. No more secrets from each other, no more conditions. They kept the crew in shape, ran their tasks, went to the Gala, sold the diamonds, got Daphne, unraveled the part about the other jewels to the others.</p><p>Toni had showed up a few times on the weeks before the ball. She would spend most of the time shadowing Debbie and making questions, ranting about the unfairness of the income distribution in America or the filthy ways of the health industry. The only way to shut her up was with food, and Debbie had no complains about it.</p><p>Debbie couldn’t help but feel left out whenever she saw Toni and Lou together. Lou knew everything about Toni, from food preferences to the fact the she never went to the movies these days because she couldn’t stay put for two hours, about where were sweaters and jackets or the names of the friends the girl had - Ian, the weird Irish boy from elementary school was still a friend, but not the only one as it used to be. Even now that Toni was a grown young woman, Lou still was able to cuddle her in just alright while sitting in an armchair. They talked about stupid celebrities and albums and trends Debbie didn't know about; they talked about a world she didn’t know about.</p><p>“Those gluten free cupcakes from Smith Street are gone,” Lou told her while making dinner one night.</p><p>“For what?” Toni asked, slicing a tomato.</p><p>“Vegan ice cream,” Lou said</p><p>“As expected,” Toni would say and they would laugh but Debbie didn't get the joke. “Mom, just wait until Taylor Swift moves into Brooklyn.”</p><p>“I can’t wait,” Lou would fake a shriek.</p><p>When she met Lou after the heist that night, sparking green jumpsuit and all that, and they walked through New York’s streets, it was hard not to believe they were on top of the world.</p><p>“Tell Toni you saw Taylor Swift at the ball and that she said she bought a place in Williamsburg. It will drive her crazy,” Lou said with a smirk. “I would tell her that myself, but she knows I was in the kitchen.”</p><p>It was so simple, so silly, and Toni wouldn’t actually believe, it would mostly throw her on a rant about gentrification. But she was let in into their inside joke, she felt embraced.</p><p>She stopped walking and turned to Lou, going onto her tiptoes and kissing her lips - it was a relief that people didn’t mind that too much these days - a brief peck before she pulled back, before she could give up on the idea.</p><p>Lou scrunched her nosed and smirked, a mischievous glint appearing in her eyes. Debbie was relieved she didn’t seem bothered at all. “That was a good heist, wasn’t it?”</p><p>“And going better still,” Debbie said, still too close.</p><p>There was a time before everything fell apart that a good heist was only over after they fell into bed together. It was the perfect end, the cherry on the top of the cake, the award for a project or whatever. Not that they needed a reason back then to have sex, but in those situation was mandatory without being a chore.</p><p>If that night was going to end like that, it wouldn’t be a mistake, the two of them knew that. It was the last step to put them back where they belonged.</p><p>“I see,” Lou said, one hand coming to her on Debbie’s hip and the other grazzing over her cheekbone until she put a lock of the blonde hair of the wig behind her ear. “I hate that wig.”</p><p>“You do?” Debbie asked , already amused with the path they were choosing to go.</p><p>“Mmm,” Lou nodded, hand running down to cup Debbie’s jaw.</p><p>They had danced around each other all those months and now was end of that line.</p><p>“You can take it off,” Debbie said, not being able to keep her eyes out of Lou’s lips.</p><p>Lou faked a scoff. “Not in the middle of the street, honey. What are we, savages?”</p><p>Debbie grinned. “You are right,” she said with a sigh. “So, let’s keep walking, it’d be nice to get home before sunrise.” And started walking.</p><p>The blonde pulled her back to her by the hand, while signaling to a cab with the other. “Come on, I’m in a hurry. I really can’t stand that wig,” she said with the wickedest grin Debbie had ever see.</p><p>As soon as they entered the loft, mouths clashed against each other and hands roamed through all the right places as if a day hadn’t passed since the last time they did that. When they managed to find their way to Lou’s bedroom, their actions went from frantic to delicate. The rush was gone, the finish line was crossed, the journey back to each other was over and now they could rest in each other's arms.</p><p>Lou sat Debbie between her legs on the bed and removed the wig, carefully removing the pins from her scalp and allowing the brown cascade of hair to fall on her shoulders and back. One pale hand swapped it aside over one shoulder and traced a line with her lips down the skin the beautiful golden dress left exposed as she unzipped and slipped it out of her shoulders.</p><p>“I missed you,” she whispered against the back of Debbie’s neck and soothed the confession with a kiss that made her shiver. “So much.” Another kiss was placed just an inch under the last one.</p><p>Debbie turned around to face her. Lou was still as beautiful - no, she was beautiful now in a way she had never been before. There was a maturity in her gaze now, a resign of expectations, a disdain for mundanities, all of these so much bolder now the the years had passed. It was in the way she recited her words and on the tip of her fingers as her hands wrapped firmly around Debbie’s waist. She was beautiful, the most beautiful thing Debbie ever laid eyes on, and they had just stolen diamonds, <em>fucking diamonds</em>, in a ball filled with America's fashion elite. As the magpie she was, she wanted nothing but to collect and keep close to her heart all the precious shining gestures, deeds, thoughts and body parts that made up that woman.</p><p>“I want to stay,” Debbie said in a whisper, mouth hovering Lou's. </p><p>The blonde nodded slightly and leaned in, brushing their noses together, her lips barely touching Debbie’s as if hesitancy was present. “You should. This is your home.”</p><p>And as Debbie kissed her cheek, the corner of her lips, touched their foreheads together and finally brought their mouth together in a lasting, searing kiss, both of them knew no one was ever leaving again.</p><hr/><p>After the heist was over, Claude Becker was locked away, and everyone has received their cuts and scattered around the globe, Lou knocked on Debbie’s bedroom door.</p><p>It may be Debbie’s bedroom, but for the past weeks it felt like theirs, just like Lou's was hers too. That didn't make sense anymore, it was time to get rid of their separate bedrooms way of life.</p><p>“Would you still be interested in that job in the club?” Lou asked.</p><p>Debbie raised an eyebrow and closed the book she was reading.</p><p>“Does it have health insurance?” She mocked. “Toni traumatized me about the horrors of our medical care industry.”</p><p>Lou laughed and leaned against the door. “I’m sorry, we don’t.”</p><p>“Fine, I’ll take it anyway, I’m kind of needing the money,” Debbie gave her a smirk.</p><p>She entered the room almost shyly, so unusual of her. Lou commanded and demanded attention in every room she entered. She didn’t walk in, she paraded. But that night, she timidly sat on the border of Debbie’s bed.</p><p>“Where are you going?” Debbie asked, shifting for her to sit by her side against the bedpost.</p><p>“I’m not sure,” Lou said, looking down at her hands on her lap.</p><p>Lou was wearing her usual skin tight pants with a tight t-shirt and the exposed skin of her arm brushed against Debbie’s own, not covered by her nightgown. The feeling of warm skin on warm skin had been a constant for them in the past weeks, and the thought that she was going to spend a few months without that brought Debbie a tinge of pain.</p><p>“I’ll be here when you come back,” Debbie said, not wanting to ask if she was going to come back, it would make her cringe - of course Lou would come back. “Parole and all of that,” she completed, trying to make the statement less cheesy.</p><p>Lou chuckled slightly. “I know.” She hesitantly reached for Debbie’s, hand, not looking at her, and intertwining their fingers. “I won’t go if you tell me not to.”</p><p>Debbie squeezed her hand. “I could never do that.”</p><p>It was her dream since they met. Lou wanted a nice bike, free time, money and the freedom to explore the world, see things she never saw before, things most people die without knowing how wonderful they are, feel the different airs and winds of each new place she found. She would tell Debbie those wishes, half-dressed, smoking a cigarette after sex, with her hair all disheveled and the afterglow all over her face. She wasn’t that young anymore: there were wrinkles around her eyes when she smiled, she had stopped smoking when Toni came along and now she couldn't be bored to even try to get dressed after sex. Debbie knew that girl was still there and, just like all those years before, Debbie wanted Lou to have everything she ever dreamed of.</p><p>The blonde nodded and turned her head to look at her, their eyes meeting, finally.</p><p>"Don't worry, I'll take care of everything. The house, the club, the kid..." Debbie smiled. "The cats."</p><p>Lou rolled her eyes and giggled that turned into a smile. “Would it be awful if I kissed you right now?”</p><p>“Like a goodbye kiss or a kiss-kiss?” Debbie asked.</p><p>Lou rolled her eyes and her smile widened. “The later.”</p><p>“In that case it wouldn’t be terrible at all.”</p><p>Then Lou did it, chastely at the beginning, but soon she was straddling Debbie, hands all tangled in long silky brown hair, hips held firmly between strong long hands. All of the sudden, she pulled back, still holding Debbie’s face close. “I’m never kissing you goodbye, Deb. Never.”</p><hr/><p>By the end of June, with Lou gone and too much free time on her hands, Debbie took a train to New Haven.</p><p>Toni's studio apartment near Yale's campus was clean and charming – a treat Lou arranged her with her cut. The curtains were rose gold, the small balcony had a breakfast table and a single Polaroid was stuck on the fridge door. It was an old one, from when she was two and the three of them spent a few weeks hiding in a lake house in Connecticut and found the camera laying around the attic. Toni had her face scrunched up in that smile she lost as she grew out of toddlerhood sitting on Debbie's lap, who had a rare smile on her face while Lou held the camera and took the picture. Now Debbie knew where the fuck that picture was.</p><p>She looked down at the pug on a red plaid dog bed nearby the sofa. "So that's Daisy."</p><p>Daisy was an ugly beige pug puppy. She had awful big eyes, greyish ears and an intense stare. Also a gift from Lou - who may or may not spoiled Toni too much.</p><p>"Cute, isn't she?" Toni looked down at her.</p><p>"I'm shocked you didn't pick a cat as pet just to piss me off," Debbie said, sitting on the sofa.</p><p>"It may be breaking news to you, but I don't hate you," Toni said, handing Debbie a mug of tea just in her style: 1/4 of milk and two cubes of sugar. Perfect.</p><p>Debbie sipped her tea and exhaled. "You have to, you can't hate Lou. When you were a toddler I promised her I’d take all your parent-directed-hate to me."</p><p>Toni laughed as if the concept of hating had never crosse her mind, too abstract to her to understand. "Have you heard of her? Last time she called she was in Wisconsin."</p><p>"Yes. But it's Wisconsin and she is sane, she must've realized it was a mistake twenty minutes after she got there," Debbie joked.</p><p>Debbie was used to being alone - God knows she spent too much time in solitary while in prison. But the loft was too big and too empty now that Lou, the gang or Toni weren't around. She would try to spend her time busy with the club but there wasn’t much to do. So, it was so refreshing to be around someone. And it was just delightful that that someone was Toni.</p><p>They went out to lunch in a steak house Toni believed Debbie would love (she did) and walked around the city after. Toni told her about how once in a while she visited Tess, but neither of them thought it was a good idea for them to show up there by surprise and decided to call another day and schedule a visit. Toni showed her favorite cake shops and they ordered two different slices on the last one they passed, stealing bites from each other's plates while they ate. It was a nice day.</p><p>"I have something to ask you," Toni said, when they were back in the apartment. She was resting her back against the glass door that led to the balcony, the night was coming and it was almost time for Debbie to part to catch her train. "To inform you, actually, since I already did it." She scratched Daisy’s head briefly before speaking. "I changed my name."</p><p>Debbie raised her eyebrows. "Did you screw up that bad?"</p><p>She laughed. "No, it's more of a choice," she said, a crease appearing between her eyebrows behind her glasses. "A moral one, I think."</p><p>"Now you worried me. So, what should I call you now?"</p><p>"Ocean," Toni said, looking nervous. Not defiant, not cocky, not even looking like herself.</p><p>Debbie stared at her. It made sense. She was an Ocean after all, for more than one reason: 1) it was her mother's maiden name, and 2) she was raised by one of them. She wonders which of those reasons brought her to the act.</p><p>"You don't like it," Toni said her face scrunching in an uncharacteristically worried expression.</p><p>"No, it's not that." Debbie sighed. "Sounds good. You're good." She nodded slightly, assimilating the situation. "I just thought if you ever were to pick one of our names it would be hers." She was talking about Lou, Toni knew she was talking about Lou.</p><p>Toni nodded. "She doesn't care about her name, though." <em>You do</em>, it was implicit.</p><p>"Have you told her yet?" Debbie asked.</p><p>The kid nodded again. "It's been a while. I enrolled Yale using it already. She kept telling me I had to tell you."</p><p>It was Debbie's turn to nod. She would never say aloud, she wouldn't know how to. Lou would know, though. Lou would hold her and kiss her temple and say she was proud and that she loved her and that finally they set the record straight because that's how it felt forever, that she was an Ocean. But she wasn't Lou. She was Debbie Ocean and words weren't her thing, and in eighteen years she hadn't yet grasped how to show Toni she loved her, that she cared about her. And specially now, she had not a clue of how to tell her that, yes, her new name was good, her new name was great because that was the name she should've had for her entire life.</p><p>"I feel less lonely now," Debbie decided to try. "I'm not the last Ocean anymore."</p><p>Toni tense face suddenly dissolved into the brightest of the beams. She crawled on her knees to Debbie on the sofa and threw her arms around her waist after discarding her glasses on the coffee table, hugging her and pressing her face onto her lap. "Thank you," she said, her voice muffled against Debbie's thigh. She wasn't thanking for just the name.</p><p>Debbie smiled as she laid her hands on her shoulders and head and leaned in to kiss her hair. It didn't smell like baby shampoo anymore - sadly - but honey shampoo instead. Smelling her in brought the same quietness to her mind as burying her face into the crook of Lou's neck as they laid in bed. She was, undeniably, home.</p><p>"You're welcome, kid," she said, mourning over the fact that her kid wasn't really a kid anymore. “You’re welcome.” Then she thought. “Isn’t this going to be bad if you ever decide to run for president?”</p><p>Toni raised her head and gave her a smirk. “Oh please, as if I’m going to be the first president with criminals in the family.”</p><p>That made Debbie laughed aloud. In her heart, a delicious burning sensation flourished with the word family, though.</p><p>She kissed the top of Toni's head again. Family, she said to herself.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. after</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was a couple of months after the heist, when Lou had just been back from her trip for a couple of days, when they ran out of luck. They didn’t get caught or anything like that, the plan was still as intact and preserved as it was planned by a brilliant mind to be.</p><p>But revenge is a dirty thing. Debbie just wished they had been clean about it. If they were coming for her, may it be to <em>her</em>, not to the gang, not to Lou, and, definitely, not to Toni.</p><p>A left leg broken in two places, a left elbow out of place, a concussion, two broken ribs and too many bruises and scratches to count was the result of the accident. A small delivery mail truck barely hit her side while she was doing some field research for an essay over the impact of gentrification in communities living around New York. She managed to fall out of the way just in time, apparently, and, for that, she was lucky to be alive. The driver left without giving her any assistance, pedestrians and local shoppers were the ones to call an ambulance.</p><p>Debbie didn’t believe it was an accident, and by the way Lou’s jaw clenched as they received the news from the hospital through the phone, and neither did she. She reached for Lou's hand, stopping it from clenching into fists, caressing the soft pale skin with her thumb.</p><p>The Beckers – or whatever was left from them that wasn’t dead or in jail as the decadent crew they were – were behind it, the crew found out. It was low, so low that Debbie knew she had underestimated the kind of scum she was dealing with. But they weren’t her priority even if Lou looked ready to break their one rule about their thief life – no murder. They had to go to Toni.</p><p>They found her in a hospital in New Jersey. She was going through surgery to fix the fractures in her left leg. There was scarce information to offer about her condition and Debbie busied herself with filling forms as Mrs. and Mrs. Stone about their daughter while keeping Lou from going mad. In the waiting room, she found herself with one hand scribbling semi fake information on the forms and making sure they got a private hospital room, while the other hand was placed against Lou's tight, going up and down up and down up and down.</p><p>It was a couple of hours later after their arrival when they could finally see her.</p><p>Toni grew up to be a 5'3’’ young woman, not bony, not chubby either. She had a good posture and had an impeccable reputation in debates. However, in that hospital bed, she looked like the small, introverted, wide-eyed kid they raised; so young and so defenseless.</p><p>Every single one of the doctors and nurses on the case told them about how their girl was lucky to be alive, how much worse her situation could've been if she had stood in a spot ten inches away from where she was. Fatal, it was what they said, it could have been fatal. She will be fine, they would tell them after those words, and that they expected Toni to leave the hospital very soon, if everything ran as they expected.</p><p>But yeah, staying in that hospital room and waiting for her to wake up after surgery was a torture. Lou would sit for hours in silence in an armchair she dragged to beside the bed, doing nothing but holding one of the limp scratched hands and listening to the sound of the machines reassuring them Toni's heart was still beating.</p><p>"Do you remember when she brought that cat home?" Lou asked, her eyes still on Toni, her voice raspy from lack of use.</p><p>It was late night after the surgery; they were exhausted but unable to rest. What if Toni woke up and found herself all alone? It was an unspoken worry; they could not leave the room.</p><p>"Wrapped in plastic bubble to not attack my asthma," Debbie said with a smile, looking at Lou still looking at Toni. “Yeah.”</p><p>Lou nodded. Her eyes were tired under her bangs. Her leather jacket was discarded on the couch and she was sitting there under the hospital lights just in a white t-shirt, looking young and mature at the same time. She sighed before talking. "She was easy. Parents everywhere always said they were in trouble but Toni was always easy, wasn't she? Just so easy."</p><p>Debbie got up from the couch by the wall and sat by the arm of the chair, hugging Lou from behind. "She was," she said in a small whisper against the back of Lou's neck. "We got a good one." She kissed her neck.</p><p>Lou leaned back against her, one hand still extended holding Toni's, but now leaning back on the chair and allowing herself to be wrapped in Debbie's arms.</p><p>"I love her," Debbie said, in a half whisper, like a secret, against the side of Lou's neck. Those were words she didn't say often. But at that moment, none of her actions could benefit Toni in any way, she could only hope words would evoke her back to them. "More than she knows."</p><p>Lou patted one of Debbie's hand against her stomach with her free one. "She knows," Lou told her. "She knows," she repeated, for good measure.</p><p>Debbie nodded, chin against Lou's shoulder, sniffling in that smell she and Toni shared that she came to associate with peace of mind. "I never thought I'd say this, but I really want to hear her one of her rants right now."</p><p>This made Lou chuckle briefly. "Like the one about all the social problems the superriches in America could solve with their money?"</p><p>"Or something lighter, about the climate crisis and all of that," Debbie said, hiding a smile against Lou's shoulder. "It's soothing to know the planet is going to kill me."</p><p>They laughed together, their bodies shaking slightly. Lou turned her head to the side, eyes finally leaving the kid. She trapped Debbie's upper lip between hers, softly once, then twice.</p><p>"Thank you for keeping her," Lou said, in a whisper, eyes finding Debbie's.</p><p>"Thank <em>you</em> for keeping her," Debbie said back and kissed her again, lightly, lazily, unhurried, keeping her eyes open so she could watch a brief moment of calmness on Lou's face.</p><p>Lou looked deep in her eyes as she broke the kiss. “Don’t blame yourself, for any of this. Ever.” And her eyes softened. “Please.”</p><p>Because of course Lou saw it coming, of course she caught up with Debbie’s feelings about all of that before even Debbie had a chance to. Of course, amidst her own fears and worries and pain she thought of Debbie.</p><p>And Debbie just nodded, not knowing what to say but knowing that Lou understood her silence, and rested their forehead together. For Lou, for Toni, she was going to try.</p><hr/><p>She heard the sound of movement against sheets and looked up from her phone, halfway through instructing the ones of the crew that were in New York about taking care of the club and picking up the godamn dog in New Haven.</p><p>"Ouch," Toni mumbled as she tried to shift into a sitting position.</p><p>"No, no, lay down," Debbie said, running to her side and laying a hand on her chest, delicately forcing her down onto the hospital bed. She lifted a hand to brush the fringe out of the girl's eyes. A smile appeared on her lips and she didn’t even fight it. Toni was awake, her same brown eyes staring back at her. "Good to see you alive."</p><p>Toni stared up at her, eyes squinting, brows frowning. "Who are you?"</p><p>Debbie stared down back at her, caught by surprise, hands still on her shoulders. None of the doctors mentioned amnesia. Maybe she was confused from the painkillers, or needed her glasses.</p><p>"I'm joking, you should see your face," Toni said and laughed. "Ouch," she complained again. Laughing with a couple of broken ribs was not a good idea.</p><p>"Insufferable," Debbie said but her voice was softer than the usual. She caressed Toni's bruised cheek carefully with her thumb. The kid looked so fragile, so small, in her hospital gown and unfocused eyes. A rush of fondness and relief ran over her body. "How are you feeling?"</p><p>"Like I've been hit by a truck," Toni said and smirked.</p><p>"You're so funny," she said, rolling her eyes with a grin. "Are you in pain?" Debbie asked.</p><p>"No, not in pain. But everything hurts," Toni answered as if it made sense. She squinted her eyes again trying to check the clock on the wall.</p><p>"It's just early evening." Debbie got up and fumbled inside her purse. "You've been out for a couple of days." She sat back on the edge of bed. "Here," she said, delicately putting a pair of blue framed round Ray-Bans on her face. "Spares. Yours got wrecked with the accident."</p><p>The kid sighed and blinked her eyes. "Thanks." She attempted to sit down again but this time Debbie arranged her pillows so she was comfortable. "Where's mom?"</p><p>"Cafeteria. It took a lot of convincing to take her out of this room," Debbie said, arranging the covers over Toni. "I'm going to call a nurse to let them know you're awake now," she told the kid. Then she remembered. "You are Ryan Stone."</p><p>Toni scrunched up her nose. "What kind of name is Ryan for a girl?"</p><p>"Ms. Stone and her wife wanted a boy," Debbie said with a grin, tenderly putting Toni’s hair behind her ears and pressing the call button. And just because she couldn't resist anymore, she kissed Toni's forehead.</p><p>A nurse came in and checked on Toni - or Ryan. She checked the movement of her toes and fingers and consulted her pain and vital signs. Apparently, she was alright, but still needed to be seen by a doctor. She left, promising to come back with a doctor soon.</p><p>Lou entered the room just a couple of minutes after the nurse had left, holding two paper cups.</p><p>"Sleeping beauty is awake," she said affectionately and approached the bed, handing Debbie one of the cups with coffee and sitting on the other side of the bed, opposed to Debbie. She leaned over Toni and kissed her not bruised cheek multiple times, measuring her enthusiasm in the name of not hurting the kid. "I love seeing you alive, baby." She kissed the size of her nose with the same delicacy.</p><p>"That's dramatic, mom. How many surgeries with overpriced additional services I went through?" Toni asked. "Thank God we are millionaires." Her voice was still drowsy from the meds.</p><p>Debbie and Lou exchanged a look. Their kid was back.</p><p>"We really missed you," Lou said fondly, cupping her face.</p><p>Toni smiled sweetly at them. She pushed the glasses up her nose and held Lou's hand against her face. "Those were the Becker guys," she said, frowning slightly.</p><p>"We know,” Debbie said, running her thumb over the back of the kid’s hand. It had occurred to her that Toni may know what had put her in that position. She had feared fingers would be pointed at her, accusing her of everything she was already blaming herself for. “They can't hurt you anymore.”</p><p>But Toni just frowned and looked between the two of them, she didn’t look angry, just confused. "You can't murder. We're Oceans."</p><p>"That's why there's a long sentence waiting for them in prison," Lou told her and leaned in to kiss the top of her head. "Don't worry, you're safe and we are all morally secured."</p><p>A folder with evidence enough to lock up for life four generations of the Beckers was sent to the New Jersey’s Police Department. The next day, they had under custody the two cousins of Becker responsible for Toni’s hit and run and a handful of other members of their circle.</p><p>The girl sighed and tried to hide a wince of pain. She rubbed her eyes under her glasses. “Is this happily ever after?”</p><p>Debbie snorted and caressed her hand. “You know it never is.” She looked around, noticed how lucky they all were at the very moment and how she didn’t want to think if that would ever happy again. She brought the hand to her lips and kissed it, shyly. “But it’s enough for now.”</p><hr/><p>They take her from the hospital to the loft ten days later. </p><p>"It's just like the old days, she is all cuddly and soft," Lou said, coming down the stairs after setting Toni in her bedroom. "And all it took was getting hit by a truck."</p><p>Debbie snorted and pushed a mug in Lou's direction over the kitchen island. They sat in oppose sides of it, looking at each other over their mugs, taking in the relief of being safe at home together. It was just like the old times again, when Toni was a toddler and they had the nights free after putting her to bed. Nostalgia ran over Debbie.</p><p>"I haven't told you," she said. "But I'm glad you're here."</p><p>Lou took a sip of her tea. "So I can deal with your annoying kid?"</p><p>"So I can look at your pretty face," Debbie said with a smirk. "And that too."</p><p>They exchanged an amused smile. They loved each other, better now than ever before.</p><p>All three of them in the loft was a new arrangement. Lou lived there with Toni while Debbie was in jail, then alone because Toni left to college, then Debbie came back and it was just the two of them, and then Lou left to her trip and Debbie was on her own there, with occasional visits from the gang.</p><p>"Is it weird if I say that I liked it better when she was a toddler?" Lou asked after a while. "We had to feed her and change diapers and tell to not put sand in her mouth but- but at least we knew she was safe.” She laughed dryly. “Now she is out there and we can't do a thing to protect her. It's so frustrating." She frowned. "We did everything to keep her happy and safe and now some fuckers can just run over her with a truck? No, that can't be right."</p><p>Debbie understood the feeling, she would be lying if it hadn’t crossed her mind a few times while she was sitting in that hospital room watching Toni recover. All she could do was offer Lou the same solace she had been trying to offer herself and hope that saying it aloud would make it truer.</p><p>"Lou," Debbie said, and reached for her hand over the counter. "Lou. Look at me." She squeezed her hand as their eyes met. "She is a tough girl and she is fucking brilliant, ir would do no good to shelter her from everything. We have to let her stood up for herself, fight her battles, face the world. She will be all right. Trust her a little bit, okay?" Then it occurred to her, maybe because she was getting old and sentimental, maybe because she knew they had done something important together, maybe because she was nostalgic and happy that the three of the were under the same roof again after so many years. "She is the best job we have ever done."</p><p>Lou's face melted into a smile. She leaned down and placed a kiss on top of their joined hands. "Soon she will be alone in Yale again. Should I move there undercover and watch over her?"</p><p>Debbie snorted. "You’re not undercover material, honey," Debbie told her, her free hand running lovingly through Lou's messy blonde hair. "But if you want to stay here I'm sure she will visit more often."</p><p>The woman looked up and squinted her eyes with a smirk. "Is thirty years enough time to move in together?" She mocked. "I don't want to rush things, I really like you."</p><p><em>I really like you, too. I love you, actually. I love you longer than I’ve ever loved anyone. Actually, I’ve spend most of my life too busy loving you to properly consider loving anyone else. And the greatest part of all of this is that I know you feel the same way.</em> She could’ve said any of it, but she just squinted her hand, and by the smile she received in return, she knew Lou understood all the things she didn’t say. They were fine.</p><p>Lou turned her head to the living room. "You allow that?"</p><p>Daisy was sleeping on Lou’s favorite design armchair, her red plaid bed abandoned in some corner of the loft.</p><p>"I told her to feel like home," Debbie said with a shruggle.</p><p>The blonde rolled her eyes. “I do have to spend more time at home,” she said with a sigh.</p><p>Debbie couldn’t agree more.</p><hr/><p>"We should get Toni a sibling," Debbie said, buttoning up her pajama top a week later.</p><p>Lou laughed loudly from the bathroom. "Alright, honey, let's conceive," she said, coming out of the bathroom and discarding the plaid robe Debbie had been secretly wearing while she was out.</p><p>"I'm being serious," Debbie said, trying to not pay too much attention to the sight of Lou only in a white tank top and black boxers.</p><p>"So am I," Lou said, hugging her from behind and dropping feather-like kisses on the side of her neck.</p><p>"I don’t want her to be all alone in this world." She tilted her head to the side and Lou swiped her long brown hair over one shoulder, exposing more skin. "I want her to have someone."</p><p>"Baby, we're too old for that," Lou mumbled against her skin before kissing her jaw and turning her around so she could kiss her chin and mouth, hot and languidly. "And she is too old for that too. She is out of the house, I am out of the house, and you have to pretend to hate Daisy," she said with a smirk before kissing the corner of her mouth then her upper lip, tongue lazily parting her lips, making Debbie moan with the warmness of her tongue in her mouth. "I changed enough diapers in this life, I'm not doing it again," she said, pulling back. "And you don't want a baby."</p><p>"I don't," Debbie said as Lou lips dropped to her chin, throat and clavicle. She pulled Lou's hips closer, thinking about how she really shouldn't had the trouble of putting her pajamas on, they were about to go anyway. "If we die now-"</p><p>"What happened to the whole 'trust her, she is a smart girl speech' you gave me?" Lou asked stopping the trail of kisses down her cleavage and facing her again.</p><p>Debbie gave her a defiant look. It was infuriating that her own words were biting her back in the ass instead of Lou. So, she kissed her and kissed her and kissed her, entangling her fingers with Lou's ever so soft hair.</p><p>"Stop kissing me to avoid the conversation you started," Lou said with a laugh, cupping her face and pulling her away delicately.</p><p>Debbie almost groaned with frustration. "We are very much alike, me and her, I know, I see it now. But I had Danny the entire time."</p><p>Lou raised an eyebrow, in thought, not in irony. Debbie knew all her faces and mannerisms, the angles her face muscles could pull. Now, she was learning the map to the lines and wrinkles appearing in the corners of her eyes and mouth; it was soothing, like she planned to pursue that hobby for her entire life and now she finally got to do it. "Maybe she will find her Lou."</p><p>Debbie rolled her eyes and smiled. She kissed Lou chastely, throwing her arms over her shoulder, hands meeting behind her head. "There's no other Lous out there. You are one of a kind, baby."</p><p>Lou smirked and started to walk Debbie backwards in the direction of the bed, palms spreading and sliding further down her waist and grabbing her ass, kissing with semi open eyes so she could enjoy the view of the woman with her eyes closed in delight before her. "She has me, she will have me and you for as long as we live. She has the crew, too. She is not alone, darling," she said, before pushing Debbie onto the bed and crawling over her, hovering her lips with her own. "Now can we stop talking about our kid? It kills the mood."</p><p>‘Your kid’ was what Lou used when Toni was being specially dorky or mimicked any of Debbie’s manners and ‘my kid’ was what she used when she needed to protect Toni from whatever Debbie had in mind. Debbie used 'your kid' whenever Toni was being a brat, and 'my kid' to piss Lou off.</p><p>Debbie couldn’t remember any of them ever using “our kid”. She liked this option way better.</p><hr/><p>Toni returned to Yale as soon as she got her leg cast removed, a week after the beginning of her second year, promising to be careful, stick to the physiotherapy routine while she was in New Haven and visit more often. Lou followed her suit, leaving to South America in the end of September, arranging to meet with Debbie in Buenos Aires in November and come home together before Thanksgiving. After that, they still had to figure things out; maybe settle down for a while in the city and see Toni more often, maybe take an year to explore Europe or Asia. They had the money, they had time and they had each other, anything was possible.</p><p>In the meantime, though, Debbie and Daisy were on their own in the loft - but never lonely.</p><p>(Daisy never went back to New Haven, unless for visits. Toni had convinced Debbie she didn't have enough time for a dog between her classes and projects so it was for the best she stayed at home. Debbie knew Toni just meant she didn't want her to feel all alone while she and Lou weren't around, so she pretended she believed Toni's excuses - plus, Daisy was good company.)</p><p>FaceTiming Toni was an almost daily event now. It wasn’t ideal, but it kept them bonded, in touch, near, close. Debbie was avidly trying to make up for the six years she spent away from the kid and, luckily, Toni seemed as content as she was with this. Toni would show her around the campus, tell her stories about her classes, share random paragraphs of knowldge she read somewhere, talk shit about her colleagues or whatever she had in mind that day.</p><p>Debbie also had dinner with her friends every now and then, whenever they were in New York of free, or whenever she was able to drive to the suburbs and spend some time with Tammy. There was also Lou’s club to keep an eye on, plays to attend, expositions to visit and streets to take long walks through the city.</p><p>One day, in one of her morning strolls to have a late brunch in a coffee shop near the loft, she sat by an outdoor table, savoring the autumn air and a plate of the blueberry pancakes Toni and she shared a love for. She tied Daisy’s leash to her chair while she read the daily edition of the Times - an habit she found out made missing Lou less painful. It was almost too perfect.</p><p>A loud cry broke her attention from her reading. She looked up to find a distressed young woman sitting by the adjacent outside table. She, too, was trying to have brunch, but the baby she had with her was fussing and kicking, making it a hard task. It was in one of the fits that the small baby shoe fell from the small foot, landing in front of Daisy.</p><p>Debbie picked up the small shoe and handed it to the distressed young mom before the pug could do anything terrible to it - she a few charges of wrecking shoes and socks on her criminal dog record. The woman tried to take it but her hands were full with the baby and the bottle she was feeding them.</p><p>"Here, let me," Debbie said, putting her newspaper on her table, approaching them and carefully putting the small, socked foot inside the small shoe.</p><p>"Oh, thank you," the woman said, sincerely. She sighed. "That was embarrassing.” She squinted, trying to latch the baby’s mouth to the bottle again. “I'm still getting used to all of this," she said, as if it wasn’t obvious.</p><p>Debbie raised her eyebrows in sympathy. "They're tough, don't worry," she said, sitting back by her table. "It gets better."</p><p>"Do you have kids?" The woman asked, before Debbie could hide herself behind the Times again.</p><p>Debbie pitied her. Something told her that poor woman hadn't been in the company of a worthy adult for a long time. God only knows how baby suck all the attention around them; she remembers her despair about Toni and how she would probably had gone to jail for abandon - or to a loony bin - if Lou wasn't there to save them for each other.</p><p>"I do," she said, because it was kind of true. "But she is old enough to tie her own shoes and feed herself now."</p><p>"Sounds like heaven," the woman said with a laugh. "Any tips?"</p><p>She thought for a second. Get a rock biker Australian chick with a heart bigger than she shows to love and care for both of you. It had worked for her but, clearly, that wasn’t a universally applicable advice.</p><p>So, she decided to go with what Lou would say. "Just take it one day at a time,” she said, smiling fondly at the memory of her partner, missing her just enough for the day. “And love them." She shrugged slightly. “It’s what worked for me.”</p>
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